The winter sun, golden and tired, <br />settles on the irregular army <br />of bottles. Outside the trucks <br />jostle toward the open road, <br />outside it's Saturday afternoon, <br />and young women in black pass by <br />arm in arm. This bar <br />is the house of silence, and we drink <br />to silence without raising our voices <br />in the old way. We drink to doors <br />that don't open, to the four walls <br />that dose their eyes, hands that run, <br />fingers that count change, toes <br />that add up to ten. Suspended <br />as we are between our business <br />and our rest, we feel the sudden peace <br />of wine and the agony of stale bread. <br />Columbus sailed from here 30 years ago <br />and never wrote home. On Saturdays <br />like this the phone still rings for him.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/house-of-silence/
