The Beggars

Arrive they in this world,
With folded hands and screams
As this world hears them in its craze
Leave them we on their own
Like unwanted clothes,
As they rot, as they dwell,
In misery, not of their own creation
As the society brings them the justice
From ignorance to indifference

On these streets, as we walk past
With our conscience asleep
The extended hands and those stories
We don’t hear and we don’t see
As we forget in our convenience
The misfortunes of time,
It may happen to us one day
Duty we have forgotten,
Message we have neglected
Let them on the streets,
Ingenious ways to clean our conscience
From folded hands to open hands,
This old journey of our existence

Quick we are to depart
From scenes of distress and pain
As we drink coffee and tea in comfort
From these reflections of our society
Do not we understand, burden upon us
Of responsibility and of our conscience
We will be questioned, we will be reminded
As we see these neglected souls,
Some call them beggars, and some actors
On the streets, through pain and conflict
In their lives, out in the open,
Like a wound, unhealed , deep

We walk past, it will never happen to us
We think to ourselves
So fragile these thoughts,
So delicate this issue
We walk past, as it may never happen
The forgotten humans, the forgotten people
In our emotion and in our logic
The old reminders of responsibility
Burden to us, their lives and stares
As we forget the justice and its faces
The human expression of old days
Free they were when borne into this world
Now stifled and suffocated as they depart
From folded hands to unfolded, our failings!

Kashkin