Little Black Child:

I met a little black child on the road,
I met a little black child in the forest.
I met a little black child and thus I had said,
'Little black child, why are you so forlorn?
Why are you so gazed like a glass?
You walk without shadows for the sun
does not find you a worth to shine on
nor to catch a reflection of her lucency.
The earth you bare does not recognise your feet,
and you have succeeded in making men purify
their bodies with pace at your beholding.'
She teethed and stoned me a trailed look
with her dust-filled eyes, her rust-filled eyes,
glowing in the requiem of a buried bone.
Her hair was tousled and her shroud stained
with blood dripping from between her loins.
Her face, outlined with incessant tears,
was covered with ash and countenance.
She heaved as if to answer my question,
as if to correct the perception of a living man.
Instead it was silence. Wind in her tongue.
Her breath smelt of war; men and children
sacrificed for the study of raucous guns.
She heaved again — a second time,
and the breath came to me like carnage,
like women raped into their bones
till their marrows gave way for threnodies.
Her silent heaving seemed different now;
she heaved and I could read them like books,
like an astrologist reading the fallen stars,
and I wondered about myself, my speech
seeming to her like a gust of wind.
'Little black child...', She hushed, silently,
her darkened face transitioning into beams,
and her arms thrown around my emptiness.
I heard her silence wreathe me with flowers
as her tempest motioned me to my grave.