You can hear them in the nurseries addicted before they breathe.

You can rock them, gently rock them, but still the babies grieve.

You can watch them on a playground fighting foes that don’t exist,

see the terror in their eyes, feel it in their fists.

 

They survive on ghetto corners, sell their soul, their pride, their skin,

and you judge them as you walk by for the dilemma they are in.

In the alleys and the back streets they take cover from the rain.

In shabby cardboard havens they hide secrets and their pain.

 

Some have come here for the freedom. Some have come to break away

from a home where violence is the order of the day.

From New York to Tallahassee, from Seattle to L. A.,

from the cradle to the concrete, from the womb to a pauper’s grave,

 

unwanted and abandoned, fighting solitude with sin,

in a bottle or a needle they escape the state they’re in.

We profess that we’ll protect them, but their numbers grow each day

as the bureaucrats in Washington turn their backs and look away.

 

Whose children are these drifters? Who even knows their name?

When will someone see they’re suffering? When will someone take the blame?

You can hear them in the nurseries addicted before they breathe.

You can rock them, gently rock them, but still the babies grieve,

still the babies grieve… 

© Susan J