Poem Body
No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother's tenderness
for a son she soon would have to forget.
The air was heavy with odours
of diarrhoea of unwashed children
with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies. Most
mothers there had long ceased
to care but not this one; she held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother's
pride as she combed the rust-coloured
hair left on his skull and then -
singing in her eyes - began carefully
to part it… In another life this
would have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she
did it like putting flowers
on a tiny grave.
Comments
I think this poem depicts a
I think this poem depicts a scene of children left in total abandonement by mothers in a refuge camp.But not this particular one who would do anything for her child inspite of how slim his survival appears.
the Biafran war, it affected
the Biafran war, it affected the eastern children in those days, I had always known that war is not an issue to advocate for
refugee mother and child
i felt as if i were an intruder, and even a little ashamed of witnessing it. perhaps that was it's objective. i'll say no more.