Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame
Eulogy to a Hell of a Dame - meaning Summary
Memory and Lethal Knowing
This short elegy records a speaker's persistent remembrance of Jane, a woman whose knowing and discontent led to her undoing. Bukowski contrasts vivid physical memories — the green dress, high heels, bones — with a sense of wasted, rotten time. The poem treats her death as both escape and indictment: she escaped a futile arrangement of life by dying, leaving the speaker to toast her lingering presence.
Read Complete AnalysesSome dogs who sleep at night must dream of bones and I remember your bones in flesh and best in that dark green dress and those high-heeled bright black shoes, you always cursed when you drank, your hair coming down you wanted to explode out of what was holding you: rotten memories of a rotten past, and you finally got out by dying, leaving me with the rotten present; You've been dead 28 years yet I remember you better than any of the rest; You were the only one who understood the futility of the arrangement of life; All the others were only displeased with trivial segments, carped nonsensically about nonsense; Jane, you were killed by knowing too much. Here's a drink to your bones that this dog still dreams about.
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