Now that you’ve gone away for five days,
I’ll smoke all the cigarettes I want,
where I want. Make biscuits and eat them
with jam and fat bacon. Loaf. Indulge
myself. Walk on the beach if I feel
like it. And I feel like it, alone and
thinking about when I was young. The people
then who loved me beyond reason.
And how I loved them above all others.
Except one. I’m saying I’ll do everything
I want here while you’re away!
But there’s one thing I won’t do.
I won’t sleep in our bed without you.
No. It doesn’t please me to do so.
I’ll sleep where I damn well feel like it –
where I sleep best when you’re away
and I can’t hold you the way I do.
On the broken sofa in my study.
This room for instance:
is chat an empty coach
that waits below?
Promises promises,
tell them nothing
for my sake.
I remember parasols,
an esplanade beside the sea,
yet these flowers...
Must I ever remain behind —
listening smoking,
scribbling down the next far thing?
1 light a cigarette
and adjust tin window shade.
There is a noise in the street
growing fainter, fainter.
is chat an empty coach
that waits below?
Promises promises,
tell them nothing
for my sake.
I remember parasols,
an esplanade beside the sea,
yet these flowers...
Must I ever remain behind —
listening smoking,
scribbling down the next far thing?
1 light a cigarette
and adjust tin window shade.
There is a noise in the street
growing fainter, fainter.
Raymond Clevie Carver (Clatskanie, Oregón, 1938 — Port Angeles, Washington, 1988). Prosista y poeta.