by Pavel Chichikov
Heavy is a hungry child
On trouser leg or on the skirt
Hanging, begging hard for bread –
What more in mass is hunger worth?
Stay here at the orphanage
You must be here, you can't be fed
Famine is the only wage
For work, so beg them hard for bread
There she stood, Madonna tall
The woman with a tray of bread
Children begging, starving all
And only some of them were fed
Father, mother was the state
The bread of which was what he ate
Hunger is an orphan's fate –
So what is love and what is hate?
Here's a slice and here's a gun
The father-mother mouth of those
Who are its daughters and its sons
Who follow it and wear its clothes
He took a gun, became a guard
Where death was profligate and hard
Convicts wore their lives away –
What could he do, what could he say?
Choose the one or choose the other
State and safety or your brother
But how if hunger weighs so much
And you must find a skirt to clutch?
Do not judge if you have eaten
And do not beat and are not beaten
And yet for love and pity's sake
Hunger feed and dryness slake
Imitate the love of Christ
The bread, the wine, the sacrifice
The devil too can water, feed
But only charity can bleed
Visit Pavel's website at Grey Owl Press.
