famine
Aborted pebbles, rocks and stones.
No fecund land, just desert bones.
What use this hollow granary still?
What good this craggy mound to till?
Dusty plains, forgotten farms,
Leathery women with listless arms.
Dusty men with empty pockets,
Parched throats, sunken sockets.
Tiny bones that strew the land
Punctuating waves of sand—
A rib that questions, a femur exclaims,
A pallid skull cries out in pain.
A fetid wind kicks up the dust
and parts a sea of death and lust.
A thousand bones of infant frame
lie scattered ‘cross the arid plain.
The men squint in the scorching sun,
The women’s eyes, glazed o’er in ruin.
Bellies swollen, the women purloined,
their hunger sated by the fruit of their loins.
