MY CHILDREN ADORE YOU
By Roland E. Williams
My children have come to visit you
Their names? Jean, Marie and petite Pierre
They do not know you
If they had, they might not have come
Although they’re filled with fear
Not for this, the unknown, but a past they escaped
My children have adored you
From afar, through visions formed
From words spoken
From few to many, They come
You are their opium. They must!
You are said to be worth adoring
To be worth their painstaking sweat,
Their tears and, yes, even their blood
Why, then, do you forsake them?
My children have come to grow with you
Their names? Juan and Maria
Pablito was left with his abuela
They have smiles on their faces
Which you mistake, too often, for grins
My sons seek to give you their sweat
And my daughters their bodies
For that is all you accept
From these, my humble children
Who have always adored you
Their smiles are now fading
They cry to return to a home they once had
For the one they have now seems most cruel. Un-hospitable
While they have toiled so for you
Why, then, do you despise them?
My children have come to ask for your help
Their names? John, Mary and Peter is still in Mom
Their faces are marked by hardship
Their eyes are shallow beads set in deep black cups
The infant opals they once were, long gone
Replaced by a vast knowledge
Of aches, where aches should never be
On parts of limbs that never ache on other beings
From life, not as you know it, but only as they do
No sweat left to extricate from their pores
For as many times as you desert them
They maintain renewed belief in you
That grew each day more and more
And that once knew tremendous proportions
Why, then, are you blind to them?
My children have come to play with you
Their names? I don’t believe they have given any
Nameless contradictions to what they have in mind
Jubilant smiles cover inner thoughts yet to unveil
Their rosy cheeks pushed to their limits
By life’s fullest pair of dentals, grinning
Hardship? They know of your brothers
Hunger? They know of your brother’s children
Your house is hence not thine, but theirs
Your sweat has lost its true value
Your mind its valor, your idiom ridiculed
Yet, you prefer asphyxiation from slavery
While you lose whatever precious little you had
To the master who once was and once more is
Why, then, my child, do you hold them high?
My children will one day not come
There will be no-one
Nay, no-one to comfort you
None to soothe the pain in your empty belly
None to show you your ways
For no more is there any to toil for you
Any to sweat for you,
To warm you chilling body
Why, then, did you not love them back?
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