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  • On Hearing for the First Time
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On Hearing for the First Time

Carole Bromley

‘It sounds very very high’

and she sobs for the joy of it,
for the reds and blues of it,
the shock, the hullabaloo,

the kerfuffle, the Sturm und Drang,
the sudden ice cream in a shake,
the sherbet firework burst.

‘It’s just amazing’ she cries
her face in her hands.
‘I’m going to say the months of the year’

and she hears them, shaking,
‘January February March’
April overwhelms her.

lt’s like never having seen a bird,
or the sea or the stars
never tasting an orange,

like living all your life in a cave
and coming out into the light,
the sun on your face.

Afterwards she walks by the Tyne,
daren’t go alone for fear
the birdsong, the traffic, the ship’s hooter

will be too much. They are not.
It’s like falling in love.


Carole Bromley

Third prize, Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, 2015: hippocrates-poetry.org. Reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

D/deafness happiness listening sensations Tools of the Trade editors' selection

About this poem

Carole Bromley is a poet and creative writing tutor from York. Winner of a number of prizes, including the Bridport, Carole is the Poetry Society’s Stanza rep for York and runs Saturday poetry surgeries for them. Her first collection, A Guided Tour of the Ice House, and her second, The Stonegate Devil,  are available from Smith/Doorstop. www.carolebromleypoetry.co.uk

This poem is one of the editors’ highlighted selection of poems from an open call for readers’ proposals for the second edition of Tools of the Trade: Poems for new doctors.

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