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TO A CHINESE REFUGEE CHILD
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They still fade not from my mind’s screen those eyes of yours those eyes lost and aghast wild with fright swollen and bulging with tears suppressed Will they breakdown this minute, this very minute in a flood of tears, sobbing and bursting…. Desolation boundless your little lips open wide revealing your tiny teeth. calling out to whom, in utter helplessness Father ! Mother! Ah sister dear Here I am… how forsaken.. shall I dash forth and run to them.. Your little feet poised for flight towards them.. did thrill of escape lift your .. your limp baby hair? And the next half-second give a throb again … Alas – not father, nor mother, nor sister dear strangers , oh God … where, oh where, shall I seek them now And so did you fling yourself down in the dust- The bosom of mother earth? Earth, the mother that place of birth greater than heaven… alas, how helpless under the heels of the aggressor cleft open by him to be filled with here own offspring her heroic sons and daughters brave thousands that laid their lives for her Up, up my babe what good is it to weep ? Who’ll heed these tears of thine? Are they human beings you glimpsed but now ? Demons they are of lust of dominion seeking but victims for their steely gods the gargantuan mouths of Machine Headless and heartless terrible anthropophagi robots that rattle soldiers of Satan marching , perhaps, your kith and kin away towards the firing squad
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Up ,my babe, and speed your little legs or swiftly hide in heath or bolt beyond the cruel ken of butchers these suckers of blood For surely they’ll strain e’en your baby –blood to transfuse to their wounded soldiers How many, many babes little Chinese orphans were snatched from cosy homes left alone or separated stranded, from their parents left in blasted places oh millions of them crying in the ruins dying away Your father and mother do you blame them , child ? Alas, you no not what befell …. When the enemy hordes reached your land the precincts of your village when shell and shrapnel began to burst your father loyal son of his native land ran forth with all his strength grenade in hand and any arms he could lay his hand upon joined the band of brave guerrillas seeking and tossing the enemy to and fro laying him low into the dust the marauding hordes inflamed with lust… But ah misfortune he was shot by a sniper through and through unerring in his deadly aim The last moment in a lightning vision you flashed before his fading eye your mother ,you, all of you.. and then the light faded away There fell he dust gathered to his country’s dust And your mother .. E’en in the midst of such blood frenzy Such fighting hand to hand moved like A flame undaunted |