In The Small Hours: The Hungry Thirties
John Brian Leaver's poem tells of the desolate wait for a son who will never return.
The Hungry Thirties
(or the years of quiet desperation).
Through a fractured evening sky
Hesperus blinks her silver'd eye
to fix a doleful, soot-blown tom
harboured from the rain
Rump to wind that buffets down
cobbled Back Mill Lane
His life-long station doomed to be
Clara's donkey-stoned sill
at number three,
framed with lace and aspidistra,
a baleful testament to symmetry
Does he brood on the morning ring
of her clog's dispirited tread,
in unbroken thrall to the tallyman's tap
for want of her daily bread?
The Bread of Heaven
cannot assuage this aching heart,
the desolate wait for a son
now carved on Thiepval's Gate.
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