Preface
This poem was inspired by Octave Tassaert’s painting Destitute Dead Mother Holding Her Sleeping Child in Winter (c. 1850). The scene is stark and quiet: a poor woman sits outside against a bare wall, her child asleep in her arms. Behind her rests a small bundle of sticks, likely gathered to sell or burn for heat, while winter dusts the fence and the city moves on.
What makes the image so haunting is the stillness of the mother. At first she appears only exhausted, worn down by poverty and cold. But with time the truth becomes clear: the child sleeps, unaware that the mother holding him has already died.
The poem begins in that frozen moment and then turns toward the present. Though the painting belongs to another century, the realities it shows; poverty, endurance, and a parent’s instinct to shield a child from the cold; remain painfully familiar. The museum may frame the image, but the winter it depicts has never truly left the world.
Destitute Dead Mother holding her sleeping Child in Winter (c. 1850) Octave Tassaert
Winter Still Finds the Poor
First thing you feel
is the cold.
Not the mother.
Not the child.
The cold.
Sitting in that street
like it owned the morning.
Snow on the stones.
Gray daylight waiting.
A shawl, a wall of winter air,
and a mother sitting still
with a sleeping child
curled in her arms.
Beside her
a bundle of sticks rests in the snow...
thin winter wood
gathered to sell
or burn
one long night at a time.
The street was poor
with quiet.
Her back against the cold stone
like something
that had forgot
how to stand.
Her hands were still.
Her eyes open,
fixed on something
far past the snow.
But the child slept,
soft and small
in the cradle of her arms,
dreaming of bread,
dreaming of warm soup,
dreaming of a sun
that stayed awhile.
He does not know.
He does not know
the arms that hold him
have already gone still.
Mercy lives in that sleep.
Too young to understand.
Too young to remember -
if someone finds him
in time.
Around them
the city walks past.
Boot heels on stone.
Carriage wheels in frost.
Men in coats
thick as money
with eyes
that never turn that way.
She holds the child tight,
the way poor folks hold hope:
close,
quiet,
and maybe
too late.
Years pass.
But winter
doesn’t.
Now the picture hangs
in a museum...
gold frame bright as morning.
People stand there
reading the little white card
like sorrow
had a name
and a date.
But I know that winter.
I seen it
under subway lights.
I seen it
on bus-stop benches
after midnight.
I seen mothers
with tired shoes
and babies sleeping
on their shoulders
while the city hums past
blue and glowing
in every hand.
Years move on...
winter stays.
It finds the poor.
Sits beside them.
Waits in quiet places.
And somewhere tonight
a mother leans against the cold
holding tomorrow
in her arms.
That painting -
quiet on the museum wall -
still burning
with the same small fire.
Love will hold a child
all night long.
But winter...
winter
is patient.
It waits.
GBS jr
2019
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