Читать книгу The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski - Страница 25

in the lobby

I saw him sitting in a lobby chair

in the Patrick Hotel

dreaming of flying fish

and he said “hello friend

you’re looking good.

me, I’m not so well,

they’ve plucked out my hair

taken my bowels

and the color in my eyes

has gone back into the sea.”

I sat down and listened

to him breathe

his last.

a bit later the clerk came over

with his green eyeshade on

and then the clerk saw what I knew

but neither of us knew

what the old man knew.

the clerk stood there

almost surprised,

taken,

wondering where the old man had gone.

he began to shake like an ape

who’d had a banana taken from his hand.

and then there was a crowd

and the crowd looked at the old man

as if he were a freak

as if there was something wrong with him.

I got up and walked out of the lobby

I went outside on the sidewalk

and I walked along with the rest of them

bellies, feet, hair, eyes

everything moving and going

getting ready to go back to the beginning

or light a cigar.

and then somebody stepped on

the back of my heel

and I was angry enough to swear.