Ghost children of Italy

From Pina Piccolo, one of the brilliant Italian translators of the bilingual edition of Migritude I: When Saris Speak.

Perfect example of how poems can voice the unspeakable when all other language fails.

On August 8th (Shailja's note: My birthday!) the "security packet" passed by the Berlusconi government came into effect. Among its measures, now that being undocumented is a crime, is the provision that if you are an "illegal alien" and you go to give birth in a hospital, Social Services takes the baby, the mother is taken to jail and then repatriated. It's about as draconian as you can get. Thinking about it, I wrote this poem.

Ballad of the celestial messengers, or the ghost children born in Italy starting August 8, 2009

…. In the land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing and sorrowing… There was not one among us who looked forward to being born…We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see… Those of us who made the pact to return to the spirit world at the first opportunity…were known among the Living as Abiku, spirit-children. We were the ones who kept coming and going, unwilling to come to terms with life…I was born not just because I had conceived a notion to stay… I prayed for laughter, a life without hunger. I was answered with paradoxes. (Ben Okri, The Famished Road)

Come forth spirit child
Into a world of collapsing towers
No water to kiss your head
No green-gowned doctor
To pull you out of your mother
No bureaucrat to inscribe your name
In the Great Book of the Living

Come forth spirit child
Born of clandestine mother
And pirate father
With rebel sisters
And swaggering brothers
Aunts by the roadside
Uncles on scaffolds
Cousins pushing wheelchairs
Grannies faraway
Grandpas long gone

Don’t long for the happy valleys
Of the Abiku
Games with the sprites
By the river
The buzzing of bees
The song of buds bursting forth

Your lullaby
The song of exile
Your milk
The sap of history
As its dregs settle
To the very bottom

Swallow the paradox,
Celestial messenger,
And bear us the cup
Of a rescued tomorrow.

Pina Piccolo, July 2009