Poem: Pietà

Pietà

Small, golden, a wisp of woman-hood
In the dark, distant future a woman grown
Kicking, square-toed at scythed stubble
By Death mown down

Eyes wonder. I straddle a crater
Ploughed by a bursting shell
Grey in my hand and cup-like
Part of a skull
Laughing I let it fall

Stabat Mater dolorosa
Juxta cruces lachrymosa
Dum pendebat filius*

O, but this bone is cheap that grows from a woman
Blind in the womb to pitiful birth
Cheaper than bullet or steel for destroying
Dung and manure to the earth

*These lines are from the C13th century hymn to Mary known as the Stabat Mater.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabat_Mater They have been translated as:

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to her Son to the last.

On 8th January 2020 we noted that an earlier poem of Lorna's suggested that she may have visited the battlefields of the World War I. The later poem blipped here provides more evidence of this. We have also recently come across a photograph of Lorna aged about six in a family group in northern France taken some time around 1920. This strengthens the case further. We'll blip the photograph in Lorna's journal at a later date.