Thin rags stuffed with straw we wore
in that terrible winter of 1960
Grass tying it around our bony bodies
Neighbours shuffled through the village
fell dead as dolls asleep in the street
Doll-like remained unburied in the cold
Silence frozen on the careless air
The last ox eaten as it died
Fowls and ducks taken by The Party
no grain being left to pay the tax
No birds sang in the trees
No rats or mice were left to scratch
Trees standing leafless barkless
Grass stripped from ground it grew in
Rat stew and song-bird soup ran out
Mice died starved as everyone
Babies didn't cry No babies lived
Tiny girls died first No more were born
At night we huddled and we froze Our toes
turned black and fell away
Good eiderdowns were taken by The Commune
All cotton covers eaten
Leaf pancakes brought a beating
The only hearth The Commune's
Two bowls of stalk and leaf soup
were not enough to line the empty bones
Young pushed and starved the old and weak
First-comers bowls were mostly water
Last arrivals lost their meagre ration
Party bullies punched the poor to death
Daughters dry of tears died first
Men and boys claimed rations for their corpse
Richer neighbours buried live
beaten kicked despised to death
Earth eaten set as clay pots inside bellies
People eaten soothed the hunger pains
Babies and the disappeared becoming soup
to send the desperate mad until
soldiers threw sacks - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - six miles away
spilling wheat eaten raw upon the road
As most of our village died
Our Chairman gave the wheat away
to feed Korea North Vietnam Albania
3.6.96.bk22.228/people CPR
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