Another poem by Mortier

We’re known by time

(rudiments of a letter)

It is our lot to let ourselves be shaken

from word’s pockets like the change

once from the crumbling lining

of your coat – all that rebounds

with the steely sound of poverty houses

what we’re unable to accommodate.

The whole world in so doing speaks our signs

and would ascribe to us more than we ever lose.

I think of floors, of huge and hefty flagstones

in the houses where you were blond,

of the kitchen sink and the pumps in their noble

anger round the taps of stainless steel that had

parched their throats, how wheezingly they coughed

when you yanked their arms, breathed a

final breath over water deep down

in those shafts, and think too of the staircase

so decayed that I outtaxed its strength

and shot through heel and all.

I had gone there to see if in a chink or much

too loose a joint they still were lying there concealed.

I hear the dance of copper on the stairs,

all that babbling speech along your shins,

and still recall, father, that even then I found

it strange: the quarters fell the quickest,

the smallest one farthest, the lightest one lowest.