For Darfur : Neglect : by Michael R. Burch

What good are your tears?

They will not spare the dying their anguish.

What good is your concern

to a child sick of living, waiting to perish?



What good, the warm benevolence of tears

without action?

What help, the eloquence of prayers,

or a pleasant benediction?



Before this day is gone,

how many more will die

with bellies swollen, wasted limbs,

and eyes too parched to cry?



I fear for our souls

as I hear the faint lament

of their souls departing ...

mournful, and distant.



How pitiful our "effort,"

yet how fatal its effect.

If they died, then surely we killed them,

if only with neglect.


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