Consummation Of Grief




by Charles Bukowski

I even hear the mountains

the way they laugh up and down their blue sides

and down in the water

the fish cry

and the water is their tears.

I listen to the water on nights

I drink away

and the sadness becomes so great

I hear it in my clock

it becomes knobs upon my dresser

it becomes paper on the floor

it becomes a shoe horn

a laundry ticket

it becomes cigarette smoke

climbing a chapel of dark vines

. . .it matters little

very little love is not so bad

or very little life

what counts

is waiting on walls

I was born for this

I was born to hustle roses

down the avenues of the dead.