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A youth hostel is a tame thing
Not risky like a sleeping outside thing. They are soft potter places
Full of soup-safe paperbacks Thumbed pack-ups and Mackintoshes
Till thick oat crumblies by the mitten stove.
Then the border hostel thing
Between this or that mountain land thing Where the half-hostellers hang-out
On the top bunks steady asleep all day
In the cabins for boys and girls and families
That at night settle down nicely to the moon’s gloom.
The half hostellers wake from their bunk thing Naked save for a wee thing thing
Climb down past faces as bright as mirrors The boys and the girls and the families
Dreaming of the soft soup paperbacks they read before they went to sleep Happily miss the next bit for the half-hostellers…
Sew paper cut string things
To the whole-hostellers’ lip things Tiny shards of ash
Feather the pillows of these woolly sleepers Ash carried from hell drifts into the
Lungs of our innocent drifters
At night the boys and girls and families Sing the songs of dead crooners
‘Moon River’ is a favourite swoon For our half-hostellers
Who light pull the singer’s string things
And cry hot thick chocolate by the mitten stove thing. Poor things.
November 17, 2014