An Al­most Made Up Po­em

C.B., 

Apaixonei-me por ti há seis anos, n'Os Correios, uma garrafa de wisky  por capítulo, uma genialidade escrita a que não estava habituada e chegando o verão deste ano zango-me contigo assumidamente não nas corridas de cavalos, que já me enfastiavam mas nas histórias que desfiaste sobre as mulheres que entornavas tão depressa como esse whisky que sempre as acompanhava. 

e hoje, cai-me no colo este poema reconciliatório a confirmar o que há seis anos o desconhecido de calças pretas me disse ao ver-me retirar da prateleira Os Correios:  "se puder, leia-o só em inglês".

Your, 
A.L.

"An almost made up poem", by Charles Bukowski 


I see you drink­ing at a foun­tain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the foun­tain is in France
where you wrote me that last let­ter and
I an­swered and nev­er heard from you again.
you used to write in­sane po­ems about
AN­GELS AND GOD, all in up­per case, and you
knew fa­mous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,
go ahead, en­ter their lives, I’ not jeal­ous
be­cause we’ nev­er met. we got close once in
New Or­leans, one half block, but nev­er met, nev­er
touched. so you went with the fa­mous and wrote
about the fa­mous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the fa­mous are wor­ried about
their fame –– not the beau­ti­ful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awak­ens
in the morn­ing to write up­per case po­ems about
AN­GELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told
us, but lis­ten­ing to you I wasn’ sure. maybe
it was the up­per case. you were one of the
best fe­male po­ets and I told the pub­lish­ers,
ed­i­tors, “ her, print her, she’ mad but she’
mag­ic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you
like a man loves a wom­an he nev­er touch­es, on­ly
writes to, keeps lit­tle pho­to­graphs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cig­a­rette and lis­tened to you piss in the bath­room,
but that didn’ hap­pen. your let­ters got sad­der.
your lovers be­trayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers be­tray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a cry­ing bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a riv­er and you sat on the cry­ing
bench ev­ery night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and for­got­ten you. I wrote back but nev­er
heard again. a friend wrote me of your sui­cide
3 or 4 months af­ter it hap­pened. if I had met you
I would prob­a­bly have been un­fair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.
Charles Bukows­ki