Tags
blizzard, childless father, daughter, fallen in batle, grief, pride and joy, sorrow, without, woman warrior
Daughter, how many years does a woman
have? You are now shapeless and I a lice
ridden old man. You knew all the Koran
by heart. You could wrestle any boy twice
your weight. The long bow sang only for you.
So did the war ax. Now I itch with grief.
From the vast and bleak steppe country a few
worn sobs can be heard. There is no relief
for the father I’ve become. I despair.
I’m lost beyond words. All I know now fails
me; all because of some mongrel swordsman.
Somewhere in a grave you hide; with your hair
that has stopped growing; and your tiny nails
that will never need to be cut again.
memories of my ghost sista 
Nice little lament for a lost daughter.
Doesn’t hair keep growing on the dead, or is that just a “scary movie” device? You’re the nurse…well?
Later…
I was thinking about that, and I recall hearing that hair and nails do grow for around 48 hours after death (I think Bram Stoker uses that as proof that a corpse is really a vampire) but in the context of the poem it is more a lament about never being able to trim the nails of one’s child, versus a worry that whatever grave she’s in will become over-run with hair … those that could be an interesting twist the zombie motif.
The Living Dead all shuffling around like Cousin It. That will go over, somewhere, sometime. Probably a Tim Burton thing…he’d get into that. Like what was written even more now…I’m kind of slow, often.
Later….
Luckily slow is not a crime where we come from … speaking of which, do you have any sloths where you live? There is a slow sanctuary in Belize I desperately want to visit one day, anyone who smiles and sleeps as much as they do can only win points in my book. Just curious =)
Costa Rica lives off eco-tourism, and there’s a place for all. There’s a sloth reserve about 90 Km from here, and a butterfly farm, and bird ranches, snake gardens, turtle refuges, Save the Monkeys organization is across the street…though all the gringoes want to kill the Howlers around 4 am.
Later….
i started to make a joke about a howler burrito as a cure to their 4 am wake-up call … then i looked at a photo of them doing their thing and decided, “you don’t have to give in to cheap puns all the time.” so let’s just say i’m glad they’re doing well in your part of the world. cheers!
They’re everywhere…and your sloths, too. And it’s not hard to find monkey meat, if you don’t like the fish straight off the boat for next to nothing…Mahi-Mahi and Wahoo – now there’s inspiration for a band name.
Later…
Oh no, I’ll always take Mahi-Mahi over almost anything else when it comes to flesh. I suppose one of the perks of being omnivorous is getting to be picky about what one eats. No monkeys, octopuses and really anything else that can do math and gets bored is off my menu (though, of all the species on earth, I’m told octopuses, anatomically speaking, are the closest to being what an alien from another planet might look like … they posses an unique structure not found in any other species … which is why I stopped eating them in my sushi, so I’ll never be accused of eating ET just in case the scientists are right)