Child of Tears
Oh child of tears, why are your eyes
Dried so with trails of pain?
Where is the joy of careless play?
Or where the bright young laughter?
Child of tears, who will wipe your face
Or hug you close and take away your fears?
Where is the hand that leads you?
Or where the voice that comforts?
Child of tears, why are your playmates
Bullet holes and craters full of fire?
Why is my body full and strong and healthy
While yours is full of pain and doubt?
Child of tears, who put you here?
Who saw you fall and walked away?
They take your picture (it’s a job)
Then talk about the game in some fine pub…
Oh, child of tears, how far away you are
Your land a story in the evening news
Of bullets, bombs and economic timetables
A few dead moms and dads and dying kids…
Child of tears, we saw the towers fall and cried
But by your tears we coldly sit, unmoved.
It amazes me that so many of us cried when we saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center come down on 9-11, but we can sit and watch the evening news with dry eyes while we see images of moms, dads, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and friends being blown up in another part of the world. Well fed western reporters send us pictures of kids with no parents, food, clothing or medical support in bombed out streets and bullet-riddled houses, but we continue to turn our backs on them, choosing, instead, to do all we can to protect our standard of living so we don’t end up like that, even if we have to use bombs and bullets and take away the moms and dads of hungry little kids in another part of the world. If this is what we mean by an enlightened society, I’d rather be struggling to live in post modern stone age. At least, then, there would be some kind of equality…
© Dave (David H.) Cottrell