Crying Children
by
E. W. Bennefeld
Crying children whisper through my dreams
with voices faint and dying
from hunger and from fading hope.
I hold my heart untouched
behind a wall of patient waiting.
A few more months, my heart,
a few months only and they’ll die,
their crying cease.
Then only ghosts of crying children
will disturb your sleep.
Currently this poem is online at The Nox Anthology – Dark Poets Against Abuse. It was first published by International Mission of Hope in its publication OURS in 1981 (I believe), and later in a chapbook to benefit the Women’s Housing, Equality and Enhancement League (WHEEL). It was also read during the English portion of a multi-media art event in Tel Aviv (during the late 1990s, if I recall correctly) organized to protest child slavery.
