Wednesday 24 November 2021

Marie Brummelhuis: 'Hunkeren'

 

Hankering

 

If you look up another word for hankering

at synonym.net, are you then perhaps pale and unhappy

with a worn-out corduroy jacket; a doomed poet

who hankers and gazes through a misted window-pane?

Tick tick tick, not the sound of a loved one’s heart

but the heating that has been turned up.

 

But there’s a draught in my cardboard attic room

mice rustle, at night I mummify myself

and listen to the groaning of creaking beds.

My downstairs neighbours are doing what people do

who are happy, or if not happy at least together,

there is no other word

for hankering.

 

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