The Tragedy of the Leaves

It is cold and windy where I live today. I look outside and I shiver even though I know it’s probably not as cold as I think it is. It just looks that way. The trees are almost bare.

I’m looking out my window this morning and all I can think of is my favorite Charles Bukowski poem. I found it when I was teaching English in another country. Some students writing for the school paper had the assignment of asking some of their teachers about their favorite poems. I think I chose this one primarily to be difficult but also because it reflected the loneliness and isolation I was feeling at the time. I hadn’t read this poem in at least ten years but I still remember the lines, the gist of it.

When I read it again this morning, it seems to have an entirely different relevance. It feels so…barren. Like me.

I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady’s note cracked in fine and
undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that’s the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world has failed us
both.