ill-fed

Even before the war, Mr. Irisov and others noted, Russia struggled to train its two classes of about 100,000 conscripts every spring and fall, with reports of problems like ill-fed troops.

Mr. Edelbijev, the Chechen, initially assured his family that all was well, though his parents had doubts when he sent them a photograph from Syria that showed him looking gaunt and ill-fed.

In Buenaventura, the country’s second biggest container port, huge ships sail past wood-slat houses where taps flow for three hours a day at most, children are ill-fed and violence is rife.

While in prison, family members say he has been ill-fed and subjected to frequent abuse.

What the poet scents here is unwashed, ill-fed city poverty.