Mummy Baby

Mummy Baby
Little baby who could not cry.
Your lifeless form that gave me tears.
The clothes-wrapped corpse lay dead for years.

Your sadness showed in hollow eye.
A face of wonder, still with time.
A fate of history, with pain sublime.

The awful rule, they must apply.
Your mother’s death when you were born.
The stars were bright in Capricorn.

No gentle heart to sing or sigh.
The only sound was songs of woe.
Your last heart’s beat came with the snow.

Upon the ice with pain you die.
I weep for you, a mummy son.
My mourning here for you begun.

A Constanza form of poetry, was created by Connie M. Wong. It has a minimum of 5 verses, with a meter of 8 syllables. The rhyme scheme is abb,acc,add, aee, aff, and more if desired.

The picture of the Greenland’s 500 year old mummy has been on my mind for a long time. This child is seen on the cover of National Geographic, February, 1985. It has been surmised that children of up to 1-2 years are “set out to die of exposure, so there would not be a burden on the tribe, “ if the mother died. The author guesses that this happened to this infant of approximately six months. It was buried in a grave with a few other deceased member of the tribe.

I have found a website that you can go to, to see what the cover looked like. Try www.coverbrouser.com/covers/national-geographic and click on the #1050-1099 section. It is about half way down. I hope it works.