Читать книгу Essential Bukowski: Poetry - Чарльз Буковски, Abel Debritto - Страница 14

he hinted at times that I was a bastard and I told him to listen

to Brahms, and I told him to learn to paint and drink and not be

dominated by women and dollars

but he screamed at me, For Christ’s sake remember your mother,

remember your country,

you’ll kill us all! . . .

I move through my father’s house (on which he owed $8,000 after 20

years on the same job) and look at his dead shoes

the way his feet curled the leather, as if he was angrily planting roses,

and he was, and I look at his dead cigarette, his last cigarette

and the last bed he slept in that night, and I feel I should remake it

but I can’t, for a father is always your master even when he’s gone;

I guess these things have happened time and again but I can’t help

thinking

to die on a kitchen floor at 7 o’clock in the morning

while other people are frying eggs

is not so rough

unless it happens to you.

I go outside and pick an orange and peel back the bright skin;

things are still living: the grass is growing quite well,

the sun sends down its rays circled by a Russian satellite,

a dog barks senselessly somewhere, the neighbors peek behind blinds.

I am a stranger here, and have been (I suppose) somewhat the rogue,

and I have no doubt he painted me quite well (the old boy and I

fought like mountain lions) and they say he left it all to some woman

in Duarte but I don’t give a damn—she can have it: he was my old

man

and he died.

inside, I try on a light blue suit

much better than anything I have ever worn

and I flap the arms like a scarecrow in the wind

but it’s no good:

I can’t keep him alive

no matter how much we hated each other.

we looked exactly alike, we could have been twins

the old man and I: that’s what they

said. he had his bulbs on the screen

ready for planting

while I was lying with a whore from 3rd Street.

very well. grant us this moment: standing before a mirror

in my dead father’s suit

waiting also

to die.