In the course of a day we shall meet one another.

But, in one day, things spring to life,
they sell grapes in the street,
tomatoes change their skin,
the young girl you liked
never came back to the office.

Suddenly they changed the postman.
The letters now are not the same.
A few golden leaves and it's different:
this tree is now well off.

Who would have said that the earth
with its ancient skin changes so much?
It has more volcanoes than yesterday,
the sky has brand new clouds,
the rivers are flowing differently.
Besides, so much as come into being!
I have inaugurated hundreds
of highways and buildings,
delicate, clean bridges
like ships or violins.

And so, when I greet you
and kiss your flowering mouth,
our kisses are other kisses,
our mouths are other mouths.

Cheers, my love, cheers for all things,
in what falls and flourishes.

Cheers for today and yesterday,
the day before and tomorrow.

Cheers for the bread and stone,
cheers for the fire and rain.

For what changes, borns, grows,
consumes itself, and becomes a kiss again.

Cheers for the air we have,
and for what we have of earth.

When our life dries up,
only the roots remain to us,
and the wind is cold like hate.

Then let us change our skin,
our nails, our blood, our gazing;
and you kiss me and I go out
to sell light on the roads.

Cheers for the night and the day,
and the four stations of the soul.

(PN)

It was perhaps a genocide of hopes
another collapse, somehow foreseen
oh but my sadness,
it had only one meaning.

All my intuitions gathered to peek at my lament,
and they succeeded.

Hitherto I had build and demolished again and again your crosswalks with me,
Hitherto I had bet on inventing a truth.

But you,
you found a way,
a most tender relentless manner to remove my love,
with one single blow, it was taken away from the suburbs of your future life,
it was wrapped in nostalgia,
carried for a mile and then for another one,
and then very slowly, without notice from that night's breeze
you left it, just there, alone to his own luck,
that ain't much.

I think you are right: it is one's fault for failing to win another's heart;
not the fault of the excuses, nor time.

It has been a long time, way too long,
since I confronted the mirror like last night,
and he was relentless like you,
but not tender.

Now I'm alone, I am frankly alone
it is always difficult to truly admit one's misfortune,
before going back to my gloomful winter chambers
drying my eyes thoroughly
just in case they glance at you falling back in the fog
while your reminiscence comes back to me.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.

Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. There are days when I can hear my bones straining under the weight of despair, this madness that erupts like an earthquake when I feel you lost. This heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until there are none. It is a mortal danger, perhaps not to life in a strict sense but mortal still, for I know very well my soul would harden and never be the same if I lose you.

But think not for a minute this is despair's babble, even in my seldom moments of calm and lucidness and peace I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than ever mine or someone else's. I want to deserve you, for I have to love you E, I have to love you. It matters not this wound that burns like two, it matters not that I search for you and I do not find you, even as the nights go by and I do not have you.

There is a fair bit of you in every garden of my life.
Truly, that is nothing extraordinary, you should know it as objectively as I do.

Nevertheless, there is something I’d like to clarify:

When I say "in every garden”,
it is not only in relation to this of now,
this of waiting for you, of hoorah! i found you!, and ******! i lost you!,
and found again, and hopefully stops there.

Nor in regard of you suddenly telling me "I’m going to cry”,
then with a discrete lump in my throat "well go ahead”.
And then a graceful invisible rainfall arrives to assist us,
perhaps the reason the sun rises unhesitatingly right after.

I’m not just referring either
at the day-to-day fluctuation of the stock in our little decisive complicities,
or that I could or believe I can turn my deficiencies to victories,
or of you to bestow upon me the tenderest gift of your most recent despair.

No.
The situation is more serious.
When I state “in every garden” I mean to say that in addition to that sweet cataclysm,
you are also rewriting my childhood,
that age when one utters "grown up” and solemn phrases,
and the solemn grown ups celebrates them,
and conversely, you think of it irrelevant.

What I mean to say is,
you are reassembling my adolescence,
that time when I was an old man full of insecurities,
and contrarily, you know how to extract from there,
my germ of joy and consciously spread it.

What I mean to say is,
you are stirring my youth,
that vain vessel no one took hold of, that proud shade no one got close to,
and you on the other hand knows very well how to shake it
until the autumn leaves start falling
till there is nothing but the flesh of my triumphless truth.

What I mean to say is,
you are grasping my maturity,
that mixture of stupor and experience,
this unknown horizon of fear and certainty,
this relentless faith on my questionable strength.

As you can see, it is serious,
extremely more serious.
Because with these or different words,
I mean to say you are not only,
the dearest girl you are,
but also the splendid and cautious* women that I love and have loved.

Because thanks to you E, I have understood,
(you’d say it was about time, and with reason),
that love, is a beautiful and generous bay, that lightens and darkens as life goes by,
a bay where ships arrive and break away,
they arrive with blossoms and presages,
and they part with krakens and storm clouds.
A beautiful and generous bay where ships set down and then leave,

But E, you, please don’t leave.

all I've ever known are ******, ex-prostitutes,
madwomen. I see men with quiet,
gentle women ­ I see them in the supermarkets,
I see them walking down the streets together,
I see them in their apartments: people at
peace, living together. I know that their
peace is only partial, but there is
peace, often hours and days of peace.

all I've ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics,
******, ex-prostitutes, madwomen.

when one leaves
another arrives
worse than her predecessor.

I see so many men with quiet clean girls in
gingham dresses
girls with faces that are not wolverine or
predatory.

"don't ever bring a ***** around," I tell my
few friends, "I'll fall in love with her."

"you couldn't stand a good woman, Bukowski."

I need a good woman. I need a good woman
more than I need this typewriter, more than
I need my automobile, more than I need
Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I
can taste her in the air, I can feel her
at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built
for her feet to walk upon,
I can see pillows for her head,
I can feel my waiting laughter,
I can see her petting a cat,
I can see her sleeping,
I can see her slippers on the floor.

I know that she exists
but where is she upon this earth
as the ****** keep finding me?


Charles Bukowski

I have fear of seeing you, necessity of seeing you, hope of seeing you, uneasiness of seeing you.
I have eagerness of finding you, worry of finding you, certainty of finding you, poor doubts of finding you.
I have urgency of hearing you, happiness of hearing you, good luck of hearing you and fearfulness of hearing you.
So to speak summarizing, I'm ****** and radiant, perhaps more the former than the last and also vice versa.

“What if God was a woman?” Asked Lois undeterred.
Well well well, if God was a woman — she continued —
Perhaps agnostics and atheists, wouldn’t say no with our heads
but we'd say yes with our guts.

Perhaps we would approach to her divine ******
to kiss her feet not of bronze, her pelvis not of stone,
her ******* not of marble, her lips not of gold.

If God was a woman, we would embrace her to steal her from her horizon
and you wouldn’t have to swear “till death do us part”
because it would be already inmortal by antonomasia,
and instead of give you AIDS or panic,
contagious her everlasting life would be.

If God was a woman, she wouldn’t lie far away in the kingdom of heavens,
but she’d live in the vestibule of hell waiting for us,
with her arms not closed, her rose not of plastic, her love not of saints.

My God, my God… — if for ever and from ever you were a woman —
how beautiful scandal it would be, what a fortunate, splendid, impossible,
prodigious blasphemy.