Have a Heart for Children, Poor!
In poverty born, bred, they live
In misery and future bleak,
All famished, ravished and ill-clad –
Most children of the modern world!
Their parents have to slog all day;
They can’t afford a single meal;
They cannot go to school but stay
As rag-pickers all life and earn.
What folly have their parents done?
The poor are unlucky always;
Their future is like broken glass,
That cannot be together put!
In mud-walled huts and roofs of leaves,
With longing eyes that beg for food,
Half-naked children wait to hear
The foot-steps of their parents come.
With weathered faces, unkempt hair,
With innocence without compare,
With mal-odor that fills the air –
How much of sorrow can they bear?
Their eyes appear to speak and plead
To anyone who passes by,
‘Have mercy on us, poor children;
We smile despite our hunger-pangs! ’
Their eyes look muddy, lack-lustre;
Their anguished hearts, enfeebled frames;
Not enough blood afills their veins;
Their food is deficient always!
Their eyes speak volumes of ill-luck,
And torture by human beings;
Their bodies bear the scars of past
unfairness, meted out by all!
They have to walk for miles bare-foot,
to fetch a pot of water that
can never quench their thirst for long
but causes diarrheal deaths!
And Nature’s furies take their toll,
As rain and floods and droughts unfold;
Diseases turn them invalids –
The God who made them watches on!
[...] Read more
poem by John Celes
Added by Poetry Lover
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