On Love

by Charles Bukowski

I am, at best, the delicate thought of a delicate hand that quenches for the mixing rope, and when beneath the love of flowers I am still, as the spider drinks the greening hour— strike gray bells of drinking, let a frog say a voice is dead, let the beasts from the pantry and the days that have hated this, the contrary wives of unblinking grief, plains of small surrender between Mexicali and Tampa; hens gone, cigarettes smoked, loaves sliced, and lest this be taken for wry sorrow: put the spider in wine, tap the thin skull sides that held poor lightning, make it less than a treacherous kiss, put me down for dancing you much more dead, I am a dish for your ashes, I am a fist for your air. the most immense thing about beauty is finding it gone.

amazing how completely a lady can give her love—when she wants to.