Читать книгу The Pleasures of the Damned - Charles Bukowski - Страница 34

The Japanese Wife

O lord, he said, Japanese women,

real women, they have not forgotten,

bowing and smiling

closing the wounds men have made;

but American women will kill you like they

tear a lampshade,

American women care less than a dime,

they’ve gotten derailed,

they’re too nervous to make good:

always scowling, belly-aching,

disillusioned, overwrought;

but oh lord, say, the Japanese women:

there was this one,

I came home and the door was locked

and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife

and chased me under the bed

and her sister came

and they kept me under that bed for two days,

and when I came out, at last,

she didn’t mention attorneys,

just said, you will never wrong me again,

and I didn’t; but she died on me,

and dying, said, you can wrong me now,

and I did,

but you know, I felt worse then

than when she was living;

there was no voice, no knife,

nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall,

all those tiny people sitting by red rivers

with flying green birds,

and I took them down and put them face down

in a drawer with my shirts,

and it was the first time I realized

that she was dead, even though I buried her;

and some day I’ll take them all out again,

all the tan-faced little people

sitting happily by their bridges and huts

and mountains—

but not right now,

not just yet.