Her hair was mostly knotted, dreadlock tangled ropes,
That wove their worried carpet covered hood,
Across the thinning features of her somewhat frozen face,
In the fashion of the waif of Broken Wood.

Her eyes were wide as buttons, with dilated pupils stark,
Staring with starvation if they could,
But she didn't know her hunger 'mid her torment in the dark,
This catatonic waif from Broken Wood.

On admission I was told that she was born in Broken Wood,
A little country town of no esteem,
She had lived the last five years in a schizophrenic hell,
And now her mind was welded to a dream.

And she looked beyond my image as she watched through concrete walls,
With no difference if she sat or if she stood,
I could tell it was so fearful that my own skin would have crawled,
Had I known the dismal nightmare of the waif of Broken Wood.

So we tried our best to reach her, tried to stimulate her senses,
Shone our torches in her eyes until our batteries were no good,
Shouted names into her ears stuck in pins till we caused tears,
But we never raised an answer from the waif of Broken Wood.

Then one day while it was raining lightning flashed and thunder boomed,
As the waif of Broken Wood sat in her trance,
And there came a dreadful moment of a deep descending gloom,
That even lightning could not lighten with its dance.

And the waif from Broken Wood simply ceased to draw her breath,
As she sat upon her lonely senseless chair,
Closed her eyes in condescending to the vision that was ending,
Dissolved the glue that held her to that penetrating stare.

Then as the storm abated, I realised what I hated,
was the feeling of my uselessness, and sense of deep despair,
It dawned upon me the next day, that all she wanted us to say,
was "we forgive" but then she wasn't there.