Sunday's poem: Nirvana by Charles Bukowski

Nirvana
by Charles Bukowski

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
 he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arrived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher.
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I’ll just sit
here, I’ll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
forward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do-
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.

“Nirvana,” by Charles Bukowksi is an evocative and affecting poem about a young man  'on the way to somewhere' who whilst travelling through North Carolina on a bus finds in the quaint strangeness of a local diner a respite from the struggles and confusion of his  own life.

 

The poem speaks to the experience of the traveller away from home who finds solace in the moment; the significance of which is not shared by others with whom he is travelling on the bus.

Tom Waits considered Bukowski something of a father figure. 

 

Waits and Bukowski were both Southern Californians. Waits observed once that Bukowski “seemed to be a writer of the common people and street people, looking in the dark corners where no one seems to want to go.”

 

A performance of the poem by Tom Waits is below.

A short film by Patrick Biesemans based on the Bukowski poem is here.