What is the theme of the poem "Night of the Scorpion' by Nissim Ezekiel

I am going to focus on a different theme of this poem and
say that the theme of "selfless motherhood" is paramount.  In order to understand this
theme, we need only to look at the beginning and the end of the
poem.

At the beginning of the poem, we learn that the
speaker is the child of the mother who is stung.

readability="5">

I remember the night my mother
was
stung by a scorpion.

It is
the middle of the poem that contains the actions of the villagers all gathering around
the mother in order to pray and to chant and to perform certain rituals and to use
certain herbs.  Despite all of the actions taken above, "after twenty hours / it lost
its sting."  This implies that none of the things the neighbors did (even the "holy man"
with his "incantations") did anything to help this mother.  In the end, she has only one
thing to say:

readability="5">

My mother only said
Thank
God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my
children.

Now THAT is true
selflessness of a mother.  She endured lots of pain and hardship (not to mention
onlookers!), and ended in a prayer of thanksgiving to God.  Even though we are not told
this in the poem, if the scorpion stung one of the children, a death may have been
imminent.  (Think of Kino's little boy in The Pearl.)  The lives of
her children was worth the pain of "my mother twisted through and through / groaning on
a mat."  Why?  Her children, her legacy, are more important than her own
life.