Literature Annotations  Day, Sarah Free Will  Genre Poem
KeywordsAbandonment, Child Abuse, Children, Family
Relationships, Illness and the Family, Mental Illness, Poverty,
Society  When at last the authorities came / to lead away her
children, she turns around and retreats "inward to the recesses
of her mind." This woman doesn't care what happens to the
children because she has lived in her own world for a long time,
but nobody noticed. The neighbors saw her trash stack up, they
smelled "the stench of fetid scraps" in her house, but they
continued along their merry way, oblivious to what was
happening. [30 lines]   Sarah Day, who teaches creative writing
at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, is one of Tasmania's
finest younger poets. This poem evokes the pain of child neglect
caused by a mother's mental illness. As in the real life
situation, the children are absent; in this case, taken away, as
well as being absent from their mother's consciousness.  The
poem also speaks to our ability to ignore what is h