How Are You Children Now? Poem by RIC BASTASA

what are these mountains?
how old are their foundations?
how long will you take it as a hiding place?
how pale have you become,
how diminished in view
away from us. There is still a way to the plains
to be with the village again
how are you children now? they have grown without you
how is it to be a man without a father?
how stern have you become?
how you shaped a system
and how the system has shaped you.
these things happen,
and i am at the middle of these crossfires
wanting to fade.