Faint music,
In the distance.
Drawing closer,
To my existence.
A worthless creation,
Cast away.
Returning now,
Revenge at bay.
Velvet curtains,
Silk sheets,
A life of riches,
And luxury.
Compared to these,
Pitiful beings.
Yet no one around,
To so much as see us.
Did you know?
They are cutting down the old trees
Up in the cantonment area
So that you can ride
In contentment
Cocooned in your air-conditioned car.
You wouldn’t know, sir
That I have walked under their shade
For the last forty years
On and off, not everyday
On and off, light to shade
From hot to cool
From peace to strife and back
Among the old trees
As they stretched out their branches
To protect me from the glare
Born with rights,
With privileges,
With money,
With connections,
Following in daddy’s footsteps,
Career decided at birth,
To take over the company,
To expand the wealth,
A maid to clean the house,
A cook to serve meals,
As you sit with a cigar in your mouth,
Not having to worry about anything,
Seven cars isn’t enough,
Three houses is too few,
Countless vacation days taken for granted,
As others are hard at work for you,
I drove through
endless rain,
seeking one merchant
who might give aid
to an empty hand.
Those poor, heartbroken wretches, doomed
To hear at night the clocks' hard tones;
They have no beds to warm their limbs,
But with those limbs must warm cold stones;
Those poor weak men, whose coughs and ailings
Force them to tear at iron railings.
Those helpless men that starve, my pity;
Whose waking day is never done;
Who, save for their own shadows, are
Doomed night and day to walk alone:
They know no bright face but the sun's,
So cold and dark are human ones.
I do not know his grace the Duke,
Outside whose gilded gate there died
Of want a feeble, poor old man,
With but his shadow at his side.
I do not know his Lady fair,
Who in a bath of milk doth lie;
More milk than could feed fifty babes,
That for the want of it must die.
But well I know the mother poor,
Three pounds of flesh wrapped in her shawl:
A puny babe that, stripped at home,
Looks like a rabbit skinned, so small.
And well I know the homeless waif,
Fed by the poorest of the poor;
Since I have seen that child alone,
Crying against a bolted door.
Sometimes I hear fine ladies sing,
Sometimes I smoke and drink with men;
Sometimes I play at games of cards--
Judge me to be no strong man then.
The strongest moment of my life
Is when I think about the poor;
When, like a spring that rain has fed,
My pity rises more and more.
The flower that loves the warmth and light,
Has all its mornings bathed in dew;
My heart has moments wet with tears,
My weakness is they are so few.
'Although I'd lie lapped up in linen
A deal I'd sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,'
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;
'Stretch bones till the daylight come
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.'
Upon a grey old battered tombstone
In Glendalough beside the stream,
Where the O'Byrnes and Byrnes are buried,
He stretched his bones and fell in a dream
Of sun and moon that a good hour
Bellowed and pranced in the round tower;
Of golden king and silver lady,
Bellowing up and bellowing round,
Till toes mastered a sweet measure,
Mouth mastered a sweet sound,
Poor little traveller, lost in night!
God made a miracle, I know,
To give you life — tears and delight,
And ecstasy and ancient woe.
Yet barefoot in the snow you stand,
Beseeching bread with shaking hand.
Poor baby, with your wistful face!
When you are grown a man, and tall,
You'll have the kingly, simple grace,
The smile that makes a festival.
Yet from the dark your hungry eyes
Behold the cook-shop’s paradise.
The driver rubbed at his nettly chin
With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black,
And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in,
And puffed out again and hung down slack :
One fang shone through his lop-sided smile,
In his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.
And the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked,
And its ears hung down, and its eyes were old,
And its knees were knuckly, and as we talked
It swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold
Its big, skinny head up — then I stepped in,
And the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.
God help the horse and the driver too,
And the people and beasts who have never a friend,
For the driver easily might have been you,
With little money in a great city
There’s snow in every street
Where I go up and down,
And there’s no woman, man, or dog
That knows me in the town.
I know each shop, and all
These Jews, and Russian Poles,
For I go walking night and noon
To spare my sack of coals.
Because you have no fear to mingle
Wings with those of greater part,
So like me, with song I single
Your sweet impudence of heart.
And when prouder feathers go where
Summer holds her leafy show,
You still come to us from nowhere
Like grey leaves across the snow.
In back ways where odd and end go
To your meals you drop down sure,
Knowing every broken window
Of the hospitable poor.
There is no bird half so harmless,
None so sweetly rude as you,
None so common and so charmless,
None of virtues nude as you.