Poem
Helen Mort
THE WORD FOR SNOW
THE WORD FOR SNOW
THE WORD FOR SNOW
The Inuit have twenty-two wordsfor snow, I told him, but he didn’t want to hear,
didn’t raise his head from the bowl of dough,
thumbs kneading flour in a frenzy.
The lawn was freezing over, but the air stayed
empty and I wondered how the Inuit
would name this waiting –
the radio playing to itself in the bathroom,
the sound from the street of
ice-cream vans out of season
in this town where we don’t have
twenty-two words for anything,
where I learned the name
for round hills built on plastic
and bothered by seagulls, the bridge
where a man was killed in the strike
and where they want to put street lamps
to keep away the kids.
From the window, I watch
the sky as it starts to fill. In the kitchen,
dad sifts flour, over and over
as if still panning for something.
© 2007, Helen Mort
From: the shape of every box
Publisher: tall-lighthouse, London
From: the shape of every box
Publisher: tall-lighthouse, London
Helen Mort
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1985)
Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985. As a child, she loved language in general and poetry in particular and can’t remember a time when she wasn’t trying to write poetry, including dictating “an incoherent poem about trains” to her mum whilst at primary school. Although “not sure where the urge to write came from”, the sounds of words entranced her. She particularly delighted in “the way so...
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THE WORD FOR SNOW
The Inuit have twenty-two wordsfor snow, I told him, but he didn’t want to hear,
didn’t raise his head from the bowl of dough,
thumbs kneading flour in a frenzy.
The lawn was freezing over, but the air stayed
empty and I wondered how the Inuit
would name this waiting –
the radio playing to itself in the bathroom,
the sound from the street of
ice-cream vans out of season
in this town where we don’t have
twenty-two words for anything,
where I learned the name
for round hills built on plastic
and bothered by seagulls, the bridge
where a man was killed in the strike
and where they want to put street lamps
to keep away the kids.
From the window, I watch
the sky as it starts to fill. In the kitchen,
dad sifts flour, over and over
as if still panning for something.
From: the shape of every box
THE WORD FOR SNOW
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