Poppies

The title, ‘A Mother in a Refugee Camp’ of the poem gives the impression that the poem may focus on refugees, the lives of refugee children, their parents, their feelings, their emotions and their pain. 'For a son she soon would have to forget'. This quote shares the idea that her son is dying, and she would have to forget him to adapt to her tragic loss. The image in the first stanza, 'No Madonna and Child could touch that picture', relates to the idea of Mary and her child, Jesus. The picture perfect image of the ideal depiction of motherhood.

The picture of a heavenly, peaceful mother with her holy newborn child. The idea of the first stanza is that the tenderness that the character, the mother, expresses towards her child in the poem is of the same degree as the ideal image of Mary and Jesus.

Unlike all the other mothers who have given up hope and accepted the fact that their children will die and they cannot save them, the mother in the poem still has that little glimmer of hope. This makes both the mother and the poem itself, even more tragic. Similarly, in the poem ‘Poppies’, Jane Weir is trying to show the feelings between the mother and son and the focus on the mother's sadness at parting, and her hopes and fears for her child.

‘She neatens his shirt collar, a maternal gesture, and resists her face softening' (presumably because she wants to be 'brave' and not show emotion). There is a sense that she feels this might embarrass her son. She wants to make a tender gesture, something from childhood, but rubbing her nose across his in an 'Eskimo kiss' is 'resisted' just as she resists the desire to run her fingers through his hair.

Both poems seem to give a Universal mother’s perspective, anxiety of having a loved one in danger, sadness of loss, conflict-war. The injustice of losing a son through war or disaster springs from both poem’s, by being shown the mother’s perspective.