Starving Child
Her child, pulled to drained breasts,
wilts in withered arms
empty, languid stomachs churn and rumble
harmonize with discordant throaty rattles
pushed from his tiny chest
Mother and child sway to Seraph’s
psalm of death
Opulence, fat and complacent,
casually tosses nourishment
into overflowed garbage cans
lids teeter unashamed, deliberately unaware
of hungry child fading in his mother’s
gaunt and waning arms
social order’s well fed whores, plump and contented,
cover inhumane infringements, turn and walk away
without thought or concern
Mother’s arms become too frail to hold him
as she surrenders her desperate grasp
his bereavement hymn, foreboding,
echoes through the night in the silence
of her respire, he hears a somber call
descends her remains,
quivers
and expels his last breath......
(2002)
I was involved in project in a local art gallery where poets were assigned a painting or a sketch and had to write a poem about it. I was given a painting of an Ethiopian mother and infant titled "Starving Child" I kept the poem title the same and this is the poem I wrote.
