My heart aches for the mothers

My heart aches for the mothers
Dying slowly in dark wards
Where human pain is crowded
Under the sorrowful hands of time

Where sisters dispense
tranquillity in pills
and the doctors the truth
on the blade of a scalpel
My heart aches for the mothers
Waning in dark hospital wards
- vestibules to crematoriums -
With the one and only hope
That the relatives
Won’t let them afterwards
Fall under the knife and needle
Of the autopsy

My heart aches for the mothers
Cremated on wooden boards
And homemade blankets
And us having to wait for months
For somebody’s ashes
To call our own

My heart aches for the mothers
It hurts me for the death
Made profane
like a chat in the queue

My heart aches for the mothers
I don’t forgive -
For their sake