THE FREE FALL OF DAYS Poem by Stefan Hertmans

There is in intervals of expectancy
no pit so shallow that the soul
fails to tumble in: the phlox that are no roses,

cloudlessly raining, bronze that crumbles
like stale cake, empty portraiture
before a breathed-on mirror,

your pale eyes which, said Baudelaire,
convey the tempest of a passion in a stain,
more insignificant than you or I,

because our dying is announced
in someone else's clothes,

the interval in which you are no longer
expected, a hole in which
your life once lay,

as night draws in your neighbour whistles low
‘No milk today', or for tomorrow anyway.