Bukowski no. 28

In Kenya they are going to destroy the ivory from four thousand elephants.
I saw a woman today so beautiful that she took the breath from my lungs
and tread it underfoot.

She kept seeing me looking at her and she laughed at me a little
and blushed a little but goddamn you should have seen her.

Tusks of ivory are the last thing that an elephant can give and beauty
is one of the first things a woman can give,
but like an elephant women sometimes do not know the price that people will pay.

I did not want to buy her or have her, or anything as coarse as that,
but I kept seeing her, with her eyes blue like the sky before sunrise—
blue like the whales that always are dying or the color of a flag,
blue like the cresting curving waves of an ocean that I have never seen.

Her hair coiled around her ears and again by her cheekbones
and she blushed when she saw all of us staring.
It is a lovely thing to be able to blush when you know why blood runs hot.

As I left for the night I passed close by her and I felt as if she were a snake full of venom-
her body moved so close to mine in a doorway that I was poisoned or intoxicated-
but then the spell was broken and she said goodbye and I said goodbye.

It seems unnecessary for women to be so pretty.
I’d fall in love with them anyway.