The Coal Chute Room

Lyrics

Down. Past the polish. Past the face of the house. Down to the engine.
Out of the Back Hall, where the floor goes from wood to stone. Past the door to the Laundry, where the steam of a Monday in 1933 still ghosts the air. I don't look in. Down the steep flight, hand on the cool brick wall. The Furnace Corridor breathes its hot, dry whisper on my neck as I pass. I'm heading for the end of the line. The last door before the foundation. The place the heat begins as weight.
The iron throat is open. The iron mouth waits. This is the room of the fall, the room of the slide. A hundred winters stacked in the corners, a dust that isn't dust. It's time, ground down to black powder. This is the lung of the house. And here is the beat. The rumble, the rattle, the settle.
A single bare bulb on a pull-chain, swinging. Its weak light catches the soot embedded in the mortar, the ghost-shapes of burlap sacks slumped against the wall. The shovel handle, there, worn smooth as river-wood, not by water, but by the grip of hands with no names left. I remember the sound of the delivery, the great slide and roar down the chute. And the final clatter of anthracite on the pile, a sharp, black taste on the back of the tongue. Cold stone. Cold iron.
This room is a box that holds a mountain. The mountain they brought in pieces, a truck at a time. And inside every black diamond of coal, another small, sealed room. The repetition is the only prayer here. Scrape. Lift. Throw. Scrape. Lift. Throw. The delivery ledgers are blank, but the air here is full of coughs from 1924. The work remembers the man, even when the house forgets.
The iron throat is open. The iron mouth is fed. A hundred winters stacked in the corners, a dust that isn't dust. It's time, ground down to black powder. This is the lung of the house. And here is the beat. The rumble, the rattle, the settle.
Scrape. Lift. Throw. The rhythm stays in the stones. The beat goes on. Even in the silence. Even now.