The Small Children/Whose Pains Are So Often Inarticulate Cries Poem by Shalom Freedman

I go on about the pains of old age
I ignore the small children
Whose pains are so often inarticulate cries
The child who cries and cries without knowing why
The child who cannot learn
And needs endless special help
To try and do what ordinary children do
The left- out child mocked by the cruel closed little ‘we're its'
The child who is ignored and unloved by uncaring parents
The child whose family too poor to give the tools needed to learn
The children who not only will never be the best
But never really good at anything
The child for whom the spontaneous joy of running and climbing and jumping
Comes rarely if at all
The child who needs special care all his life
The gifted child who ordinary children torment out of envy
The truth is that at all ages
Not simply near the end or the beginning
There is the trial the difficulty the suffering the pain
Every human being every child in some way at some point
Suffers and needs help.