BEG HER         (for Baby P.) January 2009

 

Hurrying on a grey street ,under a grey sky,

for convenience ,for time’s sake, to catch a train,

Through the back gate of a chapel I passed ,

And before the door of that cult’s emporium

at the hour of morning mass, I met a child ,

A beggar, No more than six years old, jigging

where she stood ,for her dress,   green white –polka dot,

 was too slight for winter weather, nor warmer

yet the pink rubber boots loose upon her feet.

Red-gold tousled hair,  cold- reddened cheeks ,

Pale bruised marigold  she,  a shivering bloom  

A little weed, sprung from between the paving

stones of the holy see.

She shrank  at first from my inquiring stare,

 like some rock-pool anemone, flower of flesh,

Poked or jabbed by a schoolboy’s prying stick,

But as  my coppers dropped into her paper cup –

a carton that had once held milk -

The  mouth made for laughter, tried to sneer

In mockery of  my offered compensation,

My crumpled piece of worn-out conversation,

My noble toleration of her kennel smell.

She let  out instead, a comic moan.

Then she looked beyond me and I turned to see

In   stealthy annunciation,  a woman  approach .

Her mouth half-toothed, glazed with a grin ,

the iris of her eyes  dilated in a hunter’s stare,

Her prey  the milk-less carton held out for dole,

that  rancid cardboard collection bowl.

 I turned again about and in my sight

 the girl’s clown- face was  re-born in fear,

her eyes  fixed upon her mother.

Begging her.

  When I lie, half – blinded by  imaged rays ,

deafened by commercial  shout,

 my mind  retains a picture, a transparency,

,a communion wafer of thin glass

slipped between the pages

Of   self-preservation’s  diary.

I see the begging at that back door,

beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Holy Mary ,full of grace , ever statuesque,

unmoving and unmoved ,your eyes  averted.

 From the living child ,you must be

 An icon to sleek managers of social care

 For  , posturing  your image,  they coyly say ,

‘I saw nothing,  my devotion   casts me

To  look at suffering  in another way.’