The House of Unwritten Letters

There’s a love shack, a sticky old stamp
on the wide envelope of the horizon.
A moon grows close to mollusc
with a quick breast stroke in the hedge.

The night gives no tick away and flowers
sum up days when the sun was just a sock short
of shoehorning this chimney with its rays.

And in the ground the letters fall
he’s never got and the trees enamel a bit
with their roots until another day passed.

And one morning I get up.
A mailman wanders by.
The trees enamel a bit with their roots,
I open the window wide.

The mailman sees I have opened a window,
and wonders where the moon is kept
which used to stroke hedgewise or cleaned exactly
this window where the unpostpaid corpse swings now.

At home he writes an angry letter
in such a frank and distinguished style
that politicians forget who was living where and why
and half a village will be dismantled tomorrow.

Martijn Benders