Fortune-telling

by David Constantine

Perhaps soon after they started courting, or more likely
When he got sent with the Pioneer Corps to the Mile End Road
My mother had her fortune told by a gypsy on Cross Lane Market.
Sit down there, love, this gypsy said, and stay quiet while I have a good
Long look into my crystal ball and say what’s what.

My mother went home smiling and told her best friend Elsie
What this fortune-teller, never taking her eyes off the crystal ball, had said.
She said: ‘I see a hanka an a hanka means ope.’

Ope he’d not get buried alive on the Mile End Road.
Ope he’d come home safe and sound when they sent him to India.
Ope her firstborn wouldn’t die like her sister’s one and only had.
Lots of opes there were our way: Ope Church, Ope Ospital for two.
And the hanka? Kept house and home steady even in the worst of times.
Love was the hanka from love-at-first-sight till her outliving him.

And being very lost and going right back to the dance they met at
Did I ever tell you how we met? she would ask, looking round us at the table.
Never before nor since did I hear a story so well hanka’d.