Volume 9, 2009

The Sonogram

Robert Roger Lebel

They arrived prepared for sights that would astound.
They were all smiles and banter and all hope,
ready to see face and hands, to choose a name.
Then the room was filled with joyful sound!

An expert intones a message quite obscene.
Beyond it, none can reason or can cope,
no soul on hearing it can be the same.
Who dares to think of what has here been seen?

“The baby cannot live,” he sadly spoke.
Face was seen and hands that grope,
but now there is no will to choose a name.
A child is lost before held, at this one stroke.

“Death before life,” my mentor often said:
moving in the womb but now beyond their hope,
though he knew the guilt and fear and shame
they feel to see their child so nearly dead.

And who will be prepared for something so profound?
And who can be prepared for something so profound?

Return to Table of Contents, Volume 9, 2009.