Refugee
Mother and Child (A Poem)
by Chinua Achebe
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 cease
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.
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 cease
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.
Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013) is one of Nigeria and Africa’s most recognised and decorated writers. He is more renowned for his novels and essays. He came to limelight as a poet with the publication of her book, Beware Soul Brother and other Poems (1971), published in America as Christmas in Biafra and other Poems (1971). The volume was joint-winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972. Chinua Achebe continues to be an inspiration to several people around the world.
ReplyDeleteIn poetry, enjambment or enjambement is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning runs over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet); the tension arises from the “mixed message” produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning.
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