Refugee Mother and Child

(A poignant portrayal of a mother’s love amid suffering)

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 struggling 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 another life this
Would have been a little daily
Act of no consequence before his breakfast and school;
Now she did it like putting flowers
On a tiny grave.

2. “Vultures”

(A dark meditation on evil and love’s persistence)

In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bones of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the
things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes…

Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep – her face
turned to the wall!

…Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy’s
return…

Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.

. “Beware, Soul Brother”

(A reflection on war, survival, and resilience)

We are the men of soul,
men of song we measure
our joys and pains
in tunes…

We have come to the crossroads
and we are at once
the mourners and the mourned,
the coffin and the corpse.

We are the men of soul,
men of song we measure
our joys and pains
in tunes…

Beware, soul brother,
we are the things
that are ours.

Key Themes in Achebe’s Poetry:

• Suffering & Resilience (“Refugee Mother and Child”)
• Duality of Human Nature (“Vultures”)
• Cultural Identity & War (“Beware, Soul Brother”)

Achebe’s poetry, like his prose, confronts harsh realities while affirming humanity’s enduring spirit. His work remains a vital part of African literature.