MAIL Poem by Cees Nooteboom

But then, are your ideas so clear
the mailman asked. Just at that moment
the sky darkened,
but that was another matter,
things around here happen that way,
from one moment to the next.


That means rain, he said, and it did.
Big drops. Behind him I could see the bay,
a plane leaden in the clouds,
slow. It landed.


Where do such seconds go?
How much rustling can be missed?
Which conversations cannot be
pulverized against the time-wall, in a lapse
of memory, somewhere at the bottom
of a dream?


Fiction, a house on a hill,
the psalm of rain, page six,
mailman, descent, downward path
into oblivion,
his, mine,
the fat of time


as someone might turn a page
without having read,


all written for nothing.