On Seeing a Neglected Child Crying Outside a Public Bar

What feature marks the tragedy of life,

Revealing the dark stream that underlies

The fountain springs of conduct and makes man

Of all created things most base?  Can wife,

Or home, or children with their haunting cries,

Children begotten when the senses ran

Wild and rapacious, love akin to strife –

Can these?  Or is it found where avid eyes

Fasten with covetous greed, as vultures scan,

Making a desert with suspicion rife?

No one thing only, for each but appears

A symptom of contagious foul disease

That warps the mind, saps dry the energies,

And with its dirt the Maker’s image smears.

 

Weekly Times     7.9.62