Drawers full of warm rollnecks
she knits and so tracks people
down who all the year round
brave the winter in her.

Needles are the final language.
One after another rhyme has
imposed silence on the living.
Yet they're all still here.

Their alphabet's a perfect secret,
it's under wraps, unspoken.
The one to speak can't grasp it.
Their conversation ticks, ticks around me.

Translation: Willem Groenewegen