The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps

Charles Bukowski

• Publisher: Ecco
• Year: 2009
• Topic: Littérature
• Print ISBN:
  9781574231656
• Subtopic: Classiques
• eBook ISBN:
  9780061875854

A posthumous masterwork of raw grit, racetrack bets, and cheap rooms.

This collection of previously unpublished poems offers the author's take on squabbling neighbours, off-kilter lovers, would-be hangers-on, and the loneliness of a man afflicted with acute powers of observation.

The volume gathers late-career work tracing decades across Los Angeles, moving from dingy Hollywood apartments along DeLongpre Avenue to a sunlit home in San Pedro.

Bukowski revisits graveyard-shift factory lines, the betting windows at Santa Anita and Del Mar, and the strained compromises of domestic life.

The poems track a life stripped of ceremony, recording the wear and tear of low-rent rooming houses and the stubborn endurance of ordinary survival.

The tone is gritty and amusing, spiralling out towards a cock-eyed wisdom.

• American Poetry: Late-career verses capturing late-night typing sessions in San Pedro.
• Everyday Survival: Verses capturing stubborn strays in the yard.
• Unsentimental Humor: Clear-eyed assessments of literary pretensions and eccentric rooming-house landlords.
• Also by This Author: You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense, Love is a Dog From Hell and The Last Night of the Earth Poems.

1

like the fox

I run with the hunted

and if I’m not

the happiest man

on earth

I’m surely the luckiest man

alive.

one writer’s funeral

there was a rock-and-mud slide

on the Pacific Coast Highway and we had to take a

detour and they directed us up into the Malibu hills

and traffic was slow and it was hot, and then

we were lost.

but I spotted a hearse and said, “there’s the

hearse, we’ll follow it,” and my woman said

“that’s not the hearse,” and I said, “yes, that’s the

hearse.”

the hearse took a left and I followed

it as it went up

a narrow dirt road and then pulled over and I

thought, “he’s lost too.” there was a truck and a man

selling strawberries parked there

and I pulled over

and asked

where the church was and he gave me directions and

my woman told the strawberry man, “we’ll buy some

strawberries on the way back.” then I swung

onto the road and the hearse started up again

and we continued to drive along

until we reached that

church.

we were going

to the funeral of a great man

but

the crowd was very sparse: the

family, a couple of old screenwriter friends,

two or three others. we

spoke to the family and to the wife of the deceased

and then we went in and the service began and the

priest wasn’t so good but one of the great man’s

sons gave a fine eulogy, and then it was over

and we were outside again, in our car,

following the hearse again, back down the steep

road

passing the strawberry truck again and my

woman said, “let’s not stop for strawberries,”

and as we continued to the graveyard, I thought,

Fante, you were one of the best writers ever

and this is one sad day.

finally we were at the graveside, the priest

said a few words and then it was over.

I walked up to the widow who sat very pale and

beautiful and quite alone on a folding metal chair.

“Hank,” she said, “it’s hard,” and I tried in vain

to say something that might comfort her.

we walked away then, leaving her there, and

I felt terrible.

I got a friend to drive my girlfriend back to

town while I drove to the racetrack, made it

just in time for the first race, got my bet

down as the mutuel clerk looked at me in wonder and

said, “Jesus Christ, how come you’re wearing a

necktie?”

beagle

do not bother the beagle lying there

away from grass and flowers and paths,

dreaming dogdreams, or perhaps dreaming

nothing, as men do awake;

yes, leave him be, in that simple juxtaposition,

out of the maelstrom, lucifugous as a bat,

searching bat-inward

for a state of grace.

it’s good. we’ll not ransom our fate

or his for door knobs or rasps.

the east wind whirls the blinds,

our beagle snuffles in his sleep as

outside, outside,

hedges break, the night torn mad

with footsteps.

our beagle spreads a paw,

the lamp burns warm

bathed in the life of his

size.

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• About the Author
• By Charles Bukowski
• Copyright
• About the Publisher