Millions of babies watching the
Bellies swollen, with big round
On Jessore Road--long bamboo
No place to shit but sand channel
Millions of fathers in
Millions of mothers in
Millions of brothers in
Millions of sisters nowhere to
One Million aunts are dying for
One Million uncles lamenting the
Grandfather millions homeless and
Grandmother millions silently
Millions of daughters walk in the
Millions of children wash in the floodA Million girls vomit &
Millions of families hopeless
Millions of souls nineteen seventy onehomeless on Jessore road under grey sunA million are dead, the million who
Walk toward Calcutta from East
Taxi September along Jessore
Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal loadpast watery fields thru rain flood
Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof
Wet processions Families
Stunted boys big heads don't
Look bony skulls and silent round
Starving black angels in human
Mother squats weeping and points to her
Standing thin legged like elderly nunssmall bodied hands to their mouths in
Five months small food since they settled thereon one floor mat with small empty
Father lifts up his hands at their
Tears come to their mother's
Pain makes mother Maya
Two children together in palmroof
Stare at me no word is
Rice ration, lentils one time a
Milk powder for war weary infants
No vegetable money or work for the
Rice lasts four days eat while they
Then children starve three days in a rowand vomit their next food unless they eat slow.
On Jessore road Mother wept at my
Bengali tongue cried mister
Identity card torn up on the
Husband still waits at the camp office
Baby at play I was washing the
Now they won't give us any more
The pieces are here in my celluloid
Innocent baby play our death
Two policemen surrounded by thousands of
Crowded waiting their daily bread
Carry big whistles and long bamboo sticksto whack them in line They play hungry
Breaking the line and jumping in
Into the circle sneaks one skinny
Two brothers dance forward on the mud
The guards blow their whistles and chase them in
Why are these infants massed in this
Laughing in play and pushing for
Why do they wait here so cheerful and dread?
Why this is the House where they give children
The man in the bread door Cries and comes
Thousands of boys and girls Take up his
Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today"Thousands of Children at once scream "Hooray!"Run home to tents where elders
Messenger children with bread from the
No bread more today! and and no place to
Painful baby, sick shit he has got.
Malnutrition skulls thousands for
Dysentery drains bowels all at
Nurse shows disease card
Suspension is wanting or else
Refugee camps in hospital
Newborn lay naked on mother's thin
Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe
Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must
September Jessore Road rickshaw50,000 souls in one camp I
Rows of bamboo huts in the
Open drains, and wet families waiting for
Border trucks flooded, food can’t get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machine gunning children at play?
Where are the helicopters of U.
S.
ID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?
Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Vietnnam and causing more grief?
Where are our tears?
Who weeps for the pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?
Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!
Ring O ye tongues of the world for their
Ring out ye voices for Love we don't
Ring out ye bells of electrical
Ring in the conscious of America
How many children are we who are
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care?
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare--Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit-field rainwaits by the pump well,
Woe to the world!whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.
Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?
What should we care for our cities and cars?
What shall we buy with our Food Stamps on Mars?
How many millions sit down in New Yorkand sup this night's table on bone and roast pork?
How many millions of beer cans are tossedin Oceans of Mother?
How much does She cost?
Cigar gasoline and asphalt car
Stinking the world and dimming star beams--Finish the war in your breast with a
Come taste the tears in your own Human
Pity us millions of phantoms you
Starved in Samsara on planet
How many millions of children die morebefore our Good Mothers perceive the Great Lord?
How many good fathers pay tax to
Armed forces that boast the children they've killed?
How many souls walk through Maya in
How many babes in illusory pain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?
How many loves who never get bread?
How many Aunts with holes in their head?
How many sisters skulls on the ground?
How many grandfathers make no more sound?
How many fathers in
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?
Millions of babies in
Millions of mothers in
Millions of brothers in
Millions of children nowhere to go
