Bukowski - the soldier, his wife and the bum

the soldier, his wife and the bum

I was a bum in San Francisco but once managed

to go to a symphony concert along with the well-

dressed people

and the music was good but something about the

audience was not

and something about the orchestra

and the conductor was

not,

although the building was fine and the

acoustics perfect

I preferred to listen to the music alone

on my radio

and afterwards I did go back to my room and I

turned on the radio but

then there was a pounding on the wall:

"SHUT THAT GOD-DAMNED THING OFF!"

there was a soldier in the next room

living with his wife

and he would soon be going over there to pro-

tect me from Hitler so

I snapped the radio off and then heard his

wife say, "you shouldn't have done that."

and the soldier said, "FUCK THAT GUY!"

which I thought was a very nice thing for him

to tell his wife to do.

of course,

she never did.

anyhow, I never went to another live concert

and that night I listened to the radio very

quietly, my ear pressed to the

speaker.

war has its price and peace never lasts and

millions of young men everywhere would die

and as I listened to the classical music I

heard them making love, desperately and

mournfully, through Shostakovich, Brahms,

Mozart, through crescendo and climax,

and through the shared

wail of our darkness.