Nursery Rhyme

T'was morning when we danced you to school
singing nursery rhymes you were taught.
Like mother goose, and the little Indian boys
or the pigs on your fingers that ran up your arm.
But that day in school you sang to a different tune;
The song of sick screams and gurglings in desperation.
First-hand experience like when London Bridge fell,
The suffocation; drowning, like that cat in the well.

Red from the earth, or red from the remains of strewn and torn limbs,
which even the king's men couldn't put together again.
Out of the thousands of bodies lay yours;
the familiar sight of your arm
The cold; bloodied arm which now ended in rotting flesh,
the hand that once tapped to the rhythm of countless rhymes.
'An arm! Just an arm! Oh but how precious it is;'
That was all that was recovered, the only thing they had,
the rest of your bones already ground fine enough to make bread.
Now your cold fingers lie betwixt mine,
The only thing left they could find.
And for the last time, amidst my fears
Wilt you sing to the song of my tears?

Agatha Marie Low
4E