Mrs X

Of her she was quite fearful though she did not have a gun A so called devout woman this Roman Catholic nun She often beat her rather brutally by her she was defiled When she was quite defenceless a seven years old child. Across her back and buttocks she beat her with her cane And in the presence of her young classmates she cried aloud in pain A so called servant of God yet mercy she could not show And those black memories are still with her from all of those years ago. She did not tell her parents they would not understand They too were strict disciplinarians and ruled with a heavy hand And though fifty years have passed since those bad memories with her remain And she still has nightmares of the ageing nun who beat her with her cane. At nineteen she emigrated and she married a young man Who enlisted in the army and was shipped off to Vietnam But their daughter that she carried then her father never met A bullet from a Vietcong gun brought about his early death. Her daughter died at nineteen of a rare blood disease Her bones lay in the nearby cemetery in the shadows of the trees And she still a devout Catholic still go to church to pray And she will tell you it's God's will that her life turned out this way. The nun who often caned her is at peace forever more Long dead and long forgotten on that distant foreign shore And Mrs X with her bad memories until her end must live But she says it is God's will to pray for and forgive. To the faith that has caused her so much grief she remains ever true And her name I will not divulge Mrs X for her will do For those who have trespassed against her in church she kneel and pray She is truly a great person what more of her could one say.