The Pleasures of the Damned. Charles Bukowski

       for they had things to say

      the canaries were there, and the lemon tree

       and the old woman with warts;

       and I was there, a child

       and I touched the piano keys

       as they talked—

       but not too loudly

       for they had things to say,

       the three of them;

       and I watched them cover the canaries at night

       with flour sacks:

       “so they can sleep, my dear.”

      I played the piano quietly

       one note at a time,

       the canaries under their sacks,

       and there were pepper trees,

       pepper trees brushing the roof like rain

       and hanging outside the windows

       like green rain,

       and they talked, the three of them

       sitting in a warm night’s semicircle,

       and the keys were black and white

       and responded to my fingers

       like the locked-in magic

       of a waiting, grown-up world;

       and now they’re gone, the three of them

       and I am old:

       pirate feet have trod

       the clean-thatched floors

       of my soul,

       and the canaries sing no more.