ADULTERY OF GLASSES Poem by Stefan Hertmans

We drank time out of the bowl
of our hands, until
from our pedestals we clenched
the tall and slender stems,
hand on hand, glass on glass,
and tinkling set out
on the longed-for free fall,
breaking without splinters
on a bottomless ground.

Gave each other that special thing
that ran out in the day's last light,
the taste of bitter promises.

We named the past
while we were living it,
we wrote it to each other
in rings of ruby red,
we drunk ourselves a deeper present
till the bottom raised us up.