Small Passing

INGRID DE KOK
 Stanza 1
1 Although the language itself
In this country you may not appears simple, the stresses fall on
Suffer the death of your stillborn, carefully chosen words to
remember the last push into shadow and emphasise the tragedy of the loss:
silence,
The useless wires and cords on your
in line two, for instance, the
stomach, stresses fall on “suffer” “death”
the nurse’s face, the walls, the afterbirth in a and “stillborn”.
basin.
Do not touch your breasts The verse repeats the instruction
still full of purpose. “you may not” and “do not”, this
Do not circle the house,
pack, unpack the small clothes.
immediately makes us recall the
Do not lie awake at night hearing context of apartheid prohibition
the doctor say ‘It was just as well’
and ‘You can have another’
 Stanza 1
In this country you may not Notice how she is comparing her
mourn small passings. suffering with the struggles faced
See: the newspaper boy in the rain every day by people in South
will sleep tonight in the doorway. Africa, they in turn make her
The woman in the busline suffering seem selfish and petty.
may next month be on a train
to a place not her own. "Small Passing" deals with the
The baby in the backyard now shock of losing one's baby in a
will be sent to a tired aunt, society where death is an
grow chubby, then lean,
return a stranger. everyday reality.
Mandela’s daughter tried to find her
father
through the glass. She thought they’d let
her touch him.
.
Stanza 1
And this woman’s hands are so For the mother, the death of her
heavy when she dusts own child is a tragedy beyond
the photographs of other children parallel and yet the poet gets
they fall to the floor and break. reminded often -- mainly by males
Clumsy woman, she moves so slowly -- that this is nothing compared
as if in a funeral rite with the greater tragedy
On the pavements the nannies meet. happening all around her in
These are legal gatherings. apartheid South Africa, where
They talk about everything, about death is the norm.
home,
while the children play among them,
their skins like litmus, their bonnets
clean.
Stanza 2
2 Her sentences are short and
Small wrist in the grave. incomplete, it is as if she is
Baby no one carried live repeating a list to herself, to keep
between houses, among trees. herself from crying and being
Child shot running, upset at her own loss.
stones in his pocket,
boy’s swollen stomach THEME: INHUMANE TREATMENT
full of hungry air. As a result of being white (and,
Girls carrying babies therefore, complicit in the very
not much smaller than themselves. inhuman social system), the
Erosion. Soil washed down to sea. woman has lost her right to claims
on common humanity.
 Stanza 3
3 THEME: EMPATHY
I think these mothers dream
headstones of the unborn. “‘Small passing’ does project
Their mourning rises like a wall communities of empathy’ “De
no vine will cling to. Kok’s poem suggests that female
They will not tell you your suffering is sympathy can transcend barriers
white. of race and class”
They will not say it is just as well.
They will not compete for the ashes of The black women are able to
infants. comfort her and see in her loss a
I think they will say to you:
Come with us to the place of mothers. genuine catastrophe which is
We will stroke your flat empty belly, indeed comparable with all the
let you weep with us in the dark, other tragedies happening around
and arm you with one of our babies them. Hers is literally no small
to carry home on your back. passing.
SUMMARY:
This protest poem was written in the 1980’s when the struggle against apartheid was escalating. The poet sets
a painful, personal experience of having a stillborn child against a public. Political background.
The epigraph beneath the title dedicates this poem to a white woman who was told to stop mourning her dead
child because the daily suffering of black women was more important than her loss.
The speaker first focusses on the personal loss of the white woman and the platitudes that are offered. In this
country- South Africa- she may not mourn the death of her baby and her general feelings . It ends with that
she could have another baby.
The speaker then moves on to speak about what it is to be a black child and a black mother in this country.
The speaker then describes how nannies meet on the pavements with their white charges and talk about
home.
Our attention is the focussed on the wrist of the dead infant; a protesting child carrying stones, who is shot; a
malnourished boy; teenaged mothers. The speaker compares them to soil erosion- a gradual destruction and
weakening of the land.
Finally, the speaker brings us back to the grieving mother and suggests that black mothers will not brush
aside her suffering. Their fear for their children’s futures and the losses they have suffered enables them to
unite in empathy with the grieving mother. They will allow her to weep with them and they will share their
children with them.
THEMES:
Having a stillborn child is not a trivial matter.
Women who have lost a child understand the depth of sadness that such
loss brings.
Political tragedy should not supersede personal tragedy and loss.
Apartheid caused great personal loss and tragedy.
FORM:
The poem is an elegy with irregular line length with no specific rhyme
or rhythm.
It has 3 sections with section 1 having 3 stanzas.
POETIC DEVICES:
Apostrophe: The poem is personal, intimate and very emotive because it is addressed to the mother of a
stillborn child.
Ambiguity: The title- a baby has died. The death of this white infant is small- insignificant in comparison
to the losses of black mothers, separated from their children and which were insignificant to the apartheid
government.
Understatement: It is an understatement to describe the loss of a child as a “Small
passing” .This emphasises the callous and unfeeling way man has trivialised the woman’s loss.
DICTION: Language is simple and colloquial, with some direct speech. This simple, largely literal
language highlights the cold- hearted response from the man, as well as the shocking conditions black
people in South Africa suffered. The reference to Mandela and his daughter lines 24-25 reinforces the
South African context.
Repetition: The repeated instruction- “Do not” lines 6; 8; 10 implies the man’s belief that he can control
what a bereaved woman thinks, feels and does. The words, ‘they will not’ lines 50- 53- contrast sharply
with these instructions and reinforce the positive support that the black women offer.
Use of similes and metaphors
Tone: anguished but mainly bitter.