The Saddest Face in all the World

Two middle aged Iraqi women
With earrings and hairspray
And a young Iraqi man,
In a suit.
Ask me,
The significance of these paintings.
They have seen an American flag
In the end one.

I proceed
From one end to the other.
We return to the middle to,
‘The Saddest Face in All the World’.
“And this one?”
She is the middle of her world.
A woman from the Balkans.
Old,
Her face wrinkled by time.
Head scarved,
Her bosom, a shelf
Held up by a string.

She had endured generations of war.
She had buried generations from war.
Losing to death,
Grand parents, parents,
Aunts, uncles, cousins,
Nieces, nephews,
Brothers, sisters,
Sons, daughters.
The whole spectrum of human relations.

Those behind her,
Those beside her,
And those in front.
Her thickening skin
A mausoleum
For mitochondria.
I could not imagine how
It contained
Her grief.

The Iraqi women were crying.
“This is our life now” they said.
I felt my heart plummet.

They may well have bought the painting
But it had sold
The night before
To an old friend of mine
On the same night
That my own mother died
Alone, asleep in her bed
Unbeknown to me,
She had spoken to a neighbour
The morning before
Of an incredible dream of being
Back in Ireland
Sharing the one bed
With her two sisters
And how having gone to bed first
She would later
Reach out to feel
That May had come to bed
And was beside her.

She wouldn’t have wanted to die
Any more, than any one.
But like the breath
That came with her
Her breath just went.

A woman’s grief is
The containment
Of all the imagined pain
That a loved one would have felt.
Now buried within the tomb
Of her own lonely skin.
Life must go on is a cliché
But
Life must go on.  

I cannot imagine how
The saddest face in all the world
Contains her grief
I see her toiling on even yet.
Old
Her face chiseled by time
Head scarved,
Her bosom,
A shelf
Held up by a string.