1870-1875
Glass photonegative
This photograph of a dead child, with a wreath of dianthus and surrounded by eucalypt leaves and roses, is a reminder of the high mortality of children in the nineteenth century. In the 1870s, about a quarter of all children in Australia died before five years of age, usually from diarrhoea and intestinal diseases.
The Mother
You who lines the box with white silk
and lays them to their final rest
who wraps them in the gentle sheet
ensures their eyes are closed in sleep
please hold my child's hand
as he lies down and light a candle
for he fears the dark
The Father
I always said Jump down son
I'll catch you and trusting me he leapt
I'd shepherd him, laughing in my arms.
What kind of father am I now
who cries aloud Son I'm here
stretch your hand out from the dark
knowing that he cannot reach?
To caress your curls I have wreathed dianthus leaves
around your cherub’s head. Flowers that first sprang
where Mary’s tears fell long ago, for her only son.
Carnations have incarnations; luck or funeral flowers.
Now tears fall for my angel with lily skin, rosebud lips
tears too are a symbol of a mother’s undying love.
We have laid you out in your recent christening gown
arranged so none can see the swelling in your tiny neck.
I imagine you are sleeping in a garden, so serene
your lids about to flutter open like butterfly wings.
To caress your curls I have wreathed dianthus leaves
around your cherub’s head. Dianthus; it sounds
so melodic on the tongue just like the hated word
diphtheria, diphtheria; the visitor, who came silently
came uninvited to our house and to many others.
Last night late, when the southerly wind roared in
cooled the air but not our child, she burned with fever
from that other angel’s touch, not heaven sent.
The strangling angel, invisible thief, slowly tightened
its leathery strap in baby’s throat, took her last breath.
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