The Memory of Hunger (MS)

(For Dad, Danka, and Zosia. It's all stored here, in the epigenetics.) 

God, I remember what I needed.

Not false needs, not truth.
You can't eat Truth, even with a capital T.

The bread was always just
ahead at the next train station
The promise of jam tomorrow
for the skin and bones,
ribs like spokes on a bicycle.

And what about my children?
Who pinched their dreams of a life to be?

I don’t even know if they’re 
dead or still breathing, 
whether they need a doctor
or a hug or a life far away, say, 
in Scotland,

and maybe they'll
lie beneath a tombstone there,

one day.

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