THE BEST YEARS Poem by Stefan Hertmans

Tonight the ants and stars have a date in the café;
we are lying on the warm rocks, spread out like shards
of future past, and singing voicelessly.
Above us the Milky Way glitters, white umbilical cord
in growing darkness; irony is far away,
parables get transmitted while lips,
hardened with knowledge, drift high in space,
whispering everywhere, a squeaking of bats
and recklessness, because nothing was hoarded,
everything was squandered, because that's how it's always been,
even without us -
this lying on the warm rocks, separate and together
the ants and the stars out on a date in the streets
of the firmament, and just for a while we are
an ancient whole where Descartes loses track,
until the threads snap, we let go of our hands
because finding is losing, and we stay where we are
just for a while, we are part of it without knowing,
listen to them singing along the horizon, down there
the rocks without water, where the rod rules
our lives and saves us from drought, just for a moment,
the last words of a new beginning, but without us.