IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK

The Face of Austerity

A poem about hunger

Photo by Olli Kilpi on Unsplash

The baited bear must one day bite back
or else pull against the withering rope.
It will not snap out of politeness.

It has no pity.

You have hunger.

Night and morning watch as we dig
ourselves into precarious
graves, dry and cold
and ankle-deep with inches
of snow above,
and miles of Hell below.

What do you mean, you wouldn’t fall
to your death, trying to fly?
Is there any other way to live?

You are hungry.

We worship constants.

Hunger
has
you.

There, there. Hunger was the reason
you stopped crying after a while.

When you could afford to cry,
you — you, creature, could have saved
those tears up. Selfishness watered
the earth we dig with salt. Over-indulgence
fertilised your grave. We rifle through
those crystals now and taste our demise.