Have A Heart For Children, Poor! Poem by Dr John Celes

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!

But blame must go to mankind first,
Whose wastage, wrongs and ill-wrought plans
Reduced most of the human race
To existence in poverty!

A few on earth have richer turned,
by making rest of poor, poorer!
Their hearts of greed can’t be appeased
Until their death-knell’s gong is belled!

’Tis strange to watch how hunger kills
the children of stark poverty,
Whilst big money goes down the drain
and rodents, pests eat most food-crops!

Beware of eyes of children poor!
In silent, wordless, ways, they plead
To God to change their misfortune:
Unleash His wrath upon the rich!

Copyright by Dr John Celes 09-27-2008