Children Poems

Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
...

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
...

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 'Speak to us of Children.'

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
...

When these graven lines you see,
Traveller, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.
...

WE who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
...

Come to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.
...

She sits in the park. Her clothes are out of date.
Two children whine and bicker, tug her skirt.
A third draws aimless patterns in the dirt
Someone she loved once passed by – too late
...

From Child's Garden of Verses

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
...

Part One


The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry.
...

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers---
And that cannot stop their tears.
...

I didn't go to church today,
I trust the Lord to understand.
The surf was swirling blue and white,
The children swirling on the sand.
...

A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --
Children three that nestle near,
...

Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
...

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;
...

In their faces a colourless gaping of life's adversity:
the hopeless grief of a hellish existence;
Malnourished, starving, filth and olfactory horrors;  
Their humiliating nothingness clothed in rags;
...

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
...

When voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still
...

CHILDREN, ye have not lived, to you it seems
Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams,
Or carnival of careless joys that leap
About your hearts like billows on the deep
...

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks,
For fear of coming
...

Children sing uninhibitedly when they're happy…like they haven't got a care.
Children will begin to dance spontaneously when there's music in the air.

Children will climb as high as they can climb…before they realize they can fall.
...

BETTER…GRAND…GREAT

As a parent the first thing you discuss with your partner, your husband or your wife is the hope your children will be healthy and have a happy life.
...

"Jesus, however, said, "Let the little children
come to me, and stop keeping them away,
because the kingdom from heaven
belongs to people like these."
...

When we are children, if we're lucky, our parents form a team…they teach us how to love and show us how to dream….they keep us safe and warm and happy…they make sure that we're well fed…they are the ones, when we're afraid of the dark, who check for monsters neath our bed.

But the children of war…and their parents…are not so lucky because day or night…on the ground or in the air…how can parents protect their children when there are monsters everywhere?
...

Epigraph for a Child of the Holocaust
by Michael R. Burch

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
...

Once there was a girl who was brought into the world
She was the youngest of 4, her 2 brothers and sister taught her much
The children had a mother and all shared the same father
When this girl was three her daddy went away
...

All our children are royal
All our children are special
Give them our love and protect them
Create stability and security around them.
...

They are grown men and women
They, however, behave like little children
They lack personal responsibility
They suffer from self absorbed irresponsibility
...

Nonti Nzimande died long, long ago
Yet his children still live.
Generation after generation, they live on;
Death comes to the children of Nonti
And the children of Nonti cry but won't panic
And there is survival in the children of Nonti.

Poverty swoops its deathly wings. But tough,
Strong and witty are the children of Nonti.
The wet rains fall. The roads become like
The marshed rice paddies of the Far East;
And on these desolate roads there is song
Song in the Black voices of the children of Nonti.

Someone marries
The bride does not hide her face under the veil;
The maidens dance near the kraal
Dance before the ‘make it be merry' eyes
Of the elders. The elders joshing it
On their young days.
There is still free laughter
In the children of Nonti.

An ox drops to the earth, then another;
Knives run into the meat. Making the feast
To be bloodfilled with Life.
The old, the dead, are brought into the Present
Of continuous nature in the children of Nonti.
Got to be a respecting with the children of Nonti.

When a daughter has brought shame
The women show anger; not wrath.
And the illegitimate born is one of
The family.
When a son is charged by the white law
The children of Nonti bring their heads together
In a bid to free one of the children of Nonti.

There are no sixes and nines be one
With the children of Nonti. Truth is truth
And lies are lies amongst the children of Nonti.
For when the summer takes its place after the winter
The children of Nonti rejoice
And call it proof of Truth
Truth reigns among the children of Nonti.

Sometimes a son rises above the others
Of the children of Nonti. He explains the workings
And the trappings of white thinking.
The elders debate;
And add to the abounding knowledge
Of black experience.
The son is still one of the black children of Nonti
For there is oneness in the children of Nonti.

And later, later when the sun
Is like forever down;
Later when the dark rules
Above the light of Truth
The black children of Nonti will rise and speak.
They will speak of the time
When Nonti lived in peace with his children;
Of the times when age did not count
Above experience. The children of Nonti will stand
Their grounds in the way that Nonti speared his foes
To free his black brothers from death and woes;
They shall fight with a tightened grip
Of a cornered pard. For they shall be knowing that
Nothing is more vital than standing up
For the Truths that Nonti lived for.
Then shall there be Freedom in that stand
By the children of Nonti.
Truthful tales shall be told
Of how the children of Nonti pushed their will;
And continued to live by the peace
The peace that Nonti once taught to them.
...