Before The First Cry Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

(An Operating Theatre Elegy)


The clock gnawed midnight into pieces.
Beneath the sheets, a mother fought
the ancient war between two heartbeats.
Her cries climbed the walls;
sweat darkened the pillow beneath her head.

Hour after hour,
labour tightened its iron fist.
The womb became a locked doorway,
the child, a fist against the door,
the mother's strength, a candle
bowing beneath an unseen wind.

Then the monitor stuttered.
A faltering rhythm.
A warning written in sound.
The doctor looked up.
The room forgot how to breathe.

The theatre doors swung open.

The scalpel entered first,
a sliver of captured lightning,
silver silence sharpened into purpose.
Where passage had become peril,
it offered another way.

The artery forceps followed,
two steel jaws poised against the red tide,
guarding the body's dwindling river
from spilling into silence.

Then came the retractor,
parting flesh like curtains at dawn,
opening the narrow world
where skilled hands must find their way.

Three instruments.
Three cold silences.
Yet beneath the theatre's blinding lights,
steel waited for the wisdom of hands
and the courage to act before time ran out.

The incision.
The measured hands.
The suspended breath.

Then,

a cry split the air.

Small. Fierce. Alive.

The child announced itself
before the room could find its voice.
A nurse turned, her eyes brightening.
Someone exhaled.
The mother's face, drained by hours of struggle,
lay quiet beneath the theatre lights
as careful hands continued their work.

No instrument claimed the victory.
Steel alone could promise nothing.
It took trained hands, clear judgment,
and action before delay
could write its final sentence.

Beyond the windows, dawn gathered
on the roofs of sleeping houses.
Inside, a mother rested,
and beside her, a newborn breathed.

The clock kept moving.

For once,
nobody watched it.