Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 247

And you know what you know in your head

Will you, won't you, do you

Don't you wanna make more bread?

What a bringdown

Yeah

Written by Peter Edward Baker

So it is, that the old aristocrats gather not to teach, but to remember aloud. Their words are not for the new generation's ears, but for the coins themselves.

The new aristocrats listen, not out of ignorance, but out of reverence. They know the speech is a performance of continuity, not content.

One castle guest, a former accountant turned archivist, recites the denominations like a prayer, each coin a syllable in the lost grammar of value.

Another interrupts, not to correct, but to add a footnote; "We know. But we need to hear it anyway."

And maybe that's where it goes. The speech becomes a ritual of mutual recognition. The old speak to remember, the young listen