Chinua Achebe: "Mother in a Refugee Camp"

No Madonna and Child could touch
Her tenderness for a son
She soon would have to forget. . . .
The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea,
Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs
And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps
Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there
Had long ceased to care, but not this one:
She held a ghost-smile between her teeth,
And in her eyes the memory
Of a mother’s pride. . . . She had bathed him
And rubbed him down with bare palms.
She took from their bundle of possessions
A broken comb and combed
The rust-colored hair left on his skull
And then—humming in her eyes—began carefully to part it.
In their former life this was perhaps
A little daily act of no consequence
Before his breakfast and school; now she did it
Like putting flowers on a tiny grave.

"Mother in a Refugee Camp" by Chinua Achebe, from Chinua Achebe: Collected Poems. © Anchor, 2004.

Art credit: "Famine, Korem camp. Wollo, Ethiopia, November 1984," by David Burnett. © David Burnett, 1984 (originally color).