This child alone is like a stone
Supine in silent stupor there.
His leathered skin stretched over bone
And belly swelled by hunger's prayer.

Black flies swarm all about his head
As pus drips from infected eyes.
Two eyes alive yet cold and dead
To life of silent cries.

A mud-caked cloth surrounds his loins
While bloodied rags wrap round his feet;
As strangers pass they toss him coins
That sink into the rancid street.

Each shallow gasp the child can take
Produces rattled rales of death;
No focused thought his mind can make
Beyond the struggle for each breath.

Corrosive eyes reveal the past,
His family wiped out by war,
This child now joins them all, at last,
As strangers toss him coins no more.