Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MOTHER AND CHILD, by EUGENE MANUEL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MOTHER AND CHILD, by                    
First Line: On my way homewards through the soft night's calms
Last Line: And I believed, as you too would have done.
Subject(s): Children; Grief; Mothers; Childhood; Sorrow; Sadness


ON my way homewards through the soft night's calms
I sometimes gave a shadowy spectre alms,
A wretched woman who, with stealthy pace,
Passed and repassed me, with averted face,
Lean, frail and drab, a wight from joy exiled,
Clasping the rags that swathed a puny child,
(For such it seemed; its guise one could not know,)
Which slept oblivious 'neath the rain or snow,
Finding, anear that woe-beleaguered breast,
Its only comfort and its only nest.

With hand outstretched, as suppliant from the dead,
Beneath the rays the flickering gaslight shed,
She glided noiselessly by dusky halls
And through the murk of shadow-dropping walls;
Skirting obscurity, dark coign and nook
To smite the indifferent with her anguished look.
So all men gave to her.

Much food for thought
To me the pavement's derelicts have brought.

But shall I tell you? Mammon's universe,
Will you receive my offering with a curse?
Forge weapons of it? Shall its pathos burke
Your sleeping pity, or where languors lurk,
Revive suspicion? Ah, to seal the soul;
Malign the pauper; heap with fires of coal
The brows of misery! Nay, if rebel heart
Should freeze in selfishness, or kindness start
All drouthy to its source; if I should prop
The greed of men or e'en a denier stop,
My tongue were silent. Yet why should I hide
The desperate schemes born of tyrannicide?
Light leads to truth. The ill that pigments paint
Probes deeper into wholeness with the taint;
But nowise less unlovely is decay
That naked in its horror poisons day.

What matters it if snares the highway hedge?
To search the rags of Want is sacrilege,
And it were gross this woman to rebuff;
Her wretchedness and shame are rights enough
To tax our charity; and naught that one discerns
Should e'er withhold the unguent from the burns.

I saw one evening this poor creature run
In terror headlong. Following her was one
Who wore the Law's insignia, and soon
I saw him shake the woman, nigh aswoon
From fright and weariness. At this he smiled
And tore apart the shawl that wrapped the child
And . . . horrible! I saw the infant fall;
But from the ravished mother came no call.
Did I say child? -- Rags, knots of ribboned sedge
Came rolling from it to the gutter's edge.
As I approached, the oppressor, bright with braid,
Showed me the shapeless bundle there displayed.

Pain seared my eyes. I could not see aright
And, heart-constrained to doubt the odious sight,
I shrank from that which once my pity drew,
Although to me the cheat was nowise new.
So all these lovely children lapped in dreams
Were naught but tatters rent from rotten seams,
Entreaties feigned, sham tears and anguishings --
O Shame, who jests with these so-holy things
And can resort to stratagems so vile --
A mother's grief, an infant's artless smile?
I might have left her to the Law's ally,
Less sensitive to such deceits than I,
When, tremulous with tears, as broken chime,
A voice implored me:

"It's the only time
That I've done this, Sir. Come, and you'll forgive.
I'll show you one that lives; he wants to live.
I had him with me yesterday. To-night
It was so cold. I knew the chill would bite
His tiny lungs. And you -- you wouldn't doubt --
His cough's so pitiful. I couldn't take him out;
It would have killed him, sickly as he is.
You understand, Sir? That's why I made this.
You won't let them arrest me! You are kind!
Come! You shall see the real one -- Do you mind?"

And there the poor wretch sobbed her orison
And I believed, as you too would have done.





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