Читать книгу The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski - Страница 22

for they had things to say

the canaries were there, and the lemon tree

and the old woman with warts;

and I was there, a child

and I touched the piano keys

as they talked—

but not too loudly

for they had things to say,

the three of them;

and I watched them cover the canaries at night

with flour sacks:

“so they can sleep, my dear.”

I played the piano quietly

one note at a time,

the canaries under their sacks,

and there were pepper trees,

pepper trees brushing the roof like rain

and hanging outside the windows

like green rain,

and they talked, the three of them

sitting in a warm night’s semicircle,

and the keys were black and white

and responded to my fingers

like the locked-in magic

of a waiting, grown-up world;

and now they’re gone, the three of them

and I am old:

pirate feet have trod

the clean-thatched floors

of my soul,

and the canaries sing no more.