Posted by SANGUINE on
THE WAIL OF WAIFS
Mothers!
The moon, I hear you are above our heads.
The moon that beams life, why this dim?
The voices that rotate sweet and lively lullabies,
Why cook your emotions to the stream?
Maybe hate as rissole for love be fed,
Or the anguish in those thin voices you careless to tame.
And you wiggle fat heads darkly at sounds you never tend.
But step on memories without blame-
No shame!
Oh! Penitence I serve you with jaded bread.
If I shall bathe dolour on you, please take a hot cream.
With me this cotton, better force one on faces to wend,
This so soaked with my tears and phlegm.
I hear not just babel, but cries with no aid;
Of thin heads and big eyes, that see no dream,
But nightmares, always chased by wicked breads.
Of nagging and haggard ribs, stretched as tallied marks,
Escaping roughly from skins so dried.
Of kids, waifs with no claim.
The hooting sounds of loneliness they sustain
In sour mouths like their forename,
With feeble breaths in dying minds.
They are paupers in your dirty prime,
That wear hoipolio on bones, 'how tattered'!
Beaten by childhood and hunger and your crime.
You should let them pick age with their best hands.
In cold they smoke silent sobs at dark time,
Wait!
Peep through the dark windows
And see them sleep
On tiny bones on your boulevards.
And rowse again will the bush babies,
On empty swollen stomachs.
Mothers!
You should now stand,
To clap your sight on the cracks
Of the night on this clime,
And feed the waifs with love so fecund.
And they stay in your hearts, our home,
'Til bitterness and cries become for them a forbidden fruit.
And we hear enough,
Of the wail of waifs.