Like summer in some countries and like rain
in mine, for nuns like God, for drunks like beer,
like food for chefs, for invalids like pain,
You've occupied a large part of the year.

The during months to those before and since
would make a ratio of ten to two,
counting the ones spent trying to convince
myself there was a beating heart in you

when diagrams were all you'd let me see.
Hearts should be made of either blood or stone,
of both, like mine. There's still December free -
the month in which I'll save this year, alone.


'The During Months'

Sophie Hannah's first book The Hero and the Girl Next Door (Carcanet, 1995), earned her a remarkably big audience: her broadcasts and public readings throughout the country have proved extremely popular. Her poems entertain with a cunning use of traditional form, moving beyond satire to the heart of the modern matter: loves, lusts, losses, worldly foibles, how people see themselves and how others see them, the problems of learning to drive and learning to live with a car.