Refugee Mother and child
No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother’s tenderness
for a son she soon would have to forget.

The air was heavy with odours
of diarrhea of unwashed children 5
with washed-out ribs and dried up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies. Most
mothers there had long ceased
to care but not this one; she held 10
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother’s
pride as she combed the rust-coloured
hair left on his skull and then –
singing in her eyes – began carefully 15
to part it … In another life this
must have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she
did it like putting flowers 20
on a tiny grave

What is the tone of the poem?