To Be Counted

To Be Counted

You count how many peddlers
walk in a dusty pebbled road
under the scorching heat of the sun
arms outstretched
his own fate he could not command.

You count how many paupers
plunge into darkness
amidst daylight and
lose a thousand hopes
a thousand dreams
for even the right to hope
is no longer his own.

You count how many mothers
cry in anguish
in so much pain
for her right to caress her child
could never be the same.

You count how many lilies
open their petals not in springtime
you count how many wild birds singing
tunes out of rhyme.

You count how many thousand lives
struggle for a piece of bread
in order to survive.
You count how many deaths have been offered
to give meaning to a wretched meaningless life.

And yet it is when life is full of miseries
of anguish, of pain
of hunger and of poverty
that each man begins to stand up
to give hope to his morbid sorrow
to give life to a dying promise
to give rhyme to a song and
to be counted.

Angelfire