LONGING FOR WINTER Poem by Hubert van Herreweghen

Too much thick leafiness
too few branches as yet
too little skinniness
too lushly fat
too woolly and
too wet.

Should the knife
not be stuck in
the sharp blade
until under the skin
the skeleton starts to shake
its scanty bones?

In winter their cold bums will ache.

Rather than that, fat Daniel
on snow made of rice paper,
a thin Chinese paintbrush,
ready for death, bowed but not breaking

- and yet as if it broke -
draws
two
black
twigs.