When the ships blow up and the towers fall down,
There dogs mankind, through lane and town,
A querulous Beggar in a Syrian dress,
Telling the story of his wan distress:
He dogs the market-place, he dogs church-door,
The wagons and the wharves from shore to shore;
” A penny, a penny , ” he crieth his lack
Down a million miles of railroad track;
The cottages of all the lands make one row;
And the gatemen at the shops daren’t bid him go;
And the bank-grilles open as his steps advance,
And he walks right up through the roses and the dance …
And I saw him one morning in Trafalgar Square,
And when I loafed at Lemnos, he was there!
Though he is not blind, nor has a wooden leg,
Yet the people all would shudder were he not to beg …
And he hits you a palm and his one song old:
” My children . . are hungry . . my children . . are cold. “
When the great Dam bursts and the Red River runs,
And the Earthquake smites, and the Forests are a-smoke,
And a hundred leagues of Cannon char earth to a coke,
Hear the wailing of the Beggar in the Galilean cloak —
For the wailing of the Beggar is louder than the guns …
As he lifts you a palm and his one song old:
” My children . . are hungry . . my children . . are cold. “
It was on Broadway that I saw him last,
Where the roof-signs flare on cornice and mast.
—————
The End
And that’s the End of the Poem
© Poetry Monster, 2021.
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Some external links: The Bat’s Poetry Cave. — Fledermaus’s poetry site. Talking Writing Monster. — the irreverent and irrelevant chatter on subjects both serious and not quite. A free for all board. You can scribble anything on it without registration (but it doesn’t let spammers in). You can even post your poems. Qwant.com. — a search engine from France. It’s an alternative because there are a few alternatives, like Bing, Duckduckgo, and Ecosia. And there is Yandex, the ultimate language-oriented search engine for the Russophone world. Commercial Links: Russian Commerce – the foreign trade assistance agency Other links: Poems and poetry in Russian (if you are reading this in English, as you obviously are, then you’d have to switch the language, the language switch is on the menu. More on languages)
