POEM: Requiem for Lost Children

Requiem for Lost Children

CHORUS:
Shssh.
Listen.
Can you hear them? Children singing? Children laughing?
Yes brother. Yes sister. We hear children.
Hear them
crying
sighing
dying.

****************************
Here in the desert,
hope a mirage.
The only reality,
neglect and grim squalor.
Violence is lurking. Disease ever present.
Sharp as the spinifex
pain their mother, father,
sister, brother
Harsh as the desert
these hot city pavements.
Home just a memory.
Danger is blistering innocent lives.
Lost in the alleys.
Lost in the homelands.
Lives blown away
like the red dusty Centre.
Nothing but nothing
but massaced dreams.
Pockmarked and pitted
their hopes are like pumice.
Alone and afraid on the fringes of life.
No safe place to grow in.
No place to thrive.
Searching for something
but songlines are broken
and Dreamtime’s forgotten.
****************************
CHORUS
****************************
Hear the newborn babies cry.
Cry baby, cry baby.
Yes, their mothers made them cry.
Living reckless on the edge of drugsville.
Playing poker with such precious life.
Hear the newborn babies cry.
Born high, born high.
Victims even in the womb.
Tiny creatures, lives at risk
in their mother’s dangerous world,
the drug domain where dreams are sweet
then crashing down
like surf along a lonely shore.
Fragile shells, broken minds.
Mother’s guilt and lack of care
the sober debt the child must pay.
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
Suffer the little children
and save them
oh please save them
from the deadly priests.
Hidden behind the cloth,
sinners under the cross.
Predators in the sacristy,
the stalking parson,
the viper vicar.
Suffer the little children
but keep them safe
from the parish pedophiles.
Keep them safe
from the robed and tainted
abbots, from the deacons,
from the clerics, from the curates. They have taken holy orders,
Holy Orders from the devil.
Mothers, fathers, guard your children
Save them from the deadly priests.
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
Predators are on the prowl
in the silent halls of cyberspace.
Luring children to their webs,
into digital domains
where danger dwells.
Avatars are on the prowl,
stalkers in the Second Life.
Children taking risks at night
in a silent lonely world
where the overlords
of obscene danger dwell.
Seduction is their evil game.
Children caught like little fish.
What is real?
Who are you?
Where is truth?
Where is trust?
Here are children used, abused.
Lured and baited, futures tainted.
Caught like little fish
Stalked and stained
in the Web’s seduction games.
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
In the back streets of the teaming cities
see the wide-eyed village children
meet their shameful fate.
Victims of man’s greed and lust.
Torn from family, robbed of hope.
Childhood shattered. Sold or stolen.
Bodies simply merchandise.
See them in their caged new life,
lost to dignity and love.
Ransomed, damaged, futures shrouded.
Drugged, alone and far from home.
Memories fading of their families,
of the hard and desperate lives
that left them wasting in these hellholes
Betrayed, defiled and weary,
Detritus of a rubbished life.
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
Village orphans
left to play the saddest roles
since ugly death has stolen
everyone who cares.
Mothers, fathers, all are gone
Uncles, aunties, victims of the demon AIDS
Alone the children, now the carers,
childhood too soon ripped away.
Ekeing out a life bereft and joyless,
world-worn out before their time.
Begging on the roadside verges,
fossicking for food each day
to keep their helpless siblings
alive and from harm’s way.
See these hapless victims,
innocent of blame,
playthings of a cruel fate.
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
Huddled on a broken boat
Floating on an alien sea
Hungry, thirsty
frightened, sad,
home a disappearing image.
Far too young to understand.
Why the journey?
Why the secret night-time flight?
Parents hapless desperate partners
in a costly deal with smugglers.
Sharing fate with strangers
in the grim and lonely night.
Draw the children closer still
with death a dark companion.
Fears of shrouded bodies sliding
into Neptune's watery vault.
Day by day the sun beats down
on hope, a desperate castaway.
Children cower in despair and heat.
Hungry, thirsty, fearful, lonely.
Mother, father, we are sighing,
crying, dying, far from home.
Where, oh where,
that promised land?
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
Out of darkness hear them come
roaring down the dusty tracks.
Men with guns and blades are
grasping sons from mothers’ sides.
Children screaming, mothers wailing.
Slaughtered if they dare resist.
This is how to harvest soldiers.
Steal them while they lie at rest.
Steal them when they’re still not grown.
Forge and mould them into warriors.
Teach them how to maim and kill.
Erase all thoughts of home and family.
Make them hostile, hard as steel.
Obedient to some violent cause.
Lost forever, far from home.
*****************************
CHORUS
*****************************
Living in a black black world,
dark the only path to take.
Despair the drug that shapes each day.
Nights of panic, thoughts chaotic,
tumbling ever faster into deep
and soul-destroying depths.
Then the light, an alien light,
dim at first but so seductive.
A shadow hand is reaching out,
growing closer, seeking entry,
fingering the damaged soul,
breaching walls of misery and sadness.
Here’s the pathway out of life.
This is death-love so embracing.
This the master of the night.
Nothing matters, not the darkness.
Just the loving, blinding beacon
of the deadly master’s light.
Nothing now seems more embracing
Death the certain choice, not life.
*****************************

Shssh.
Are you listening?
Can you hear us?
Shssh.
Yes. We are listening. We can hear you.
While you cower
hungry orphaned
in the rubble
bombs are falling
drones and rockets
in the deadly endless
warring game.
Hope becomes
the grand delusion
Where, oh where,
the Judgement Day.

Leila Helen Meredith is a retired Australian newspaper journalist of 30-plus years. She has been writing short stories and poetry all her adult life.