Classic Poem

I, a curious observer, mingled with the throngs of the street, becoming as one with many in a restless quest,
I noting well that is some faces prosperity had fixed its glow while in others failure had put out the last flame of the torch,
Saw that all who appeared, whether the alert or the sluggard, whether laughers or weepers, came wearing masks,
Saw that all were searching, searching, for something apart from the awards of their trade —
Searching for the same thing, searching for keys to a door, searching for ways to the open,
The surfeited because of his surfeit, the starved because of starvation,
Something I could not put into the signature on a check, something as though asking for release from a prison.

The desert was not the desert, the city was the desert,
On the city's streets men fasted, plenty was there not for them to take but for them to suffer for,
There were the idlers with sugar on their lips and bullets in their hearts,
There were mothers giving their young the crust of a last sorrow,
In the dark abattoir the children of the alleyways were cast to the beasts, to devouring laws of trade.

You are an alien in the land of your birth,
When you came all had already been given away,
The lords of the earth had their titles, the few who had betrayed the rest,
But you? — You are trespassers wherever you go, you are driven with the lash from place to place, in day and night never forgiven your vagrancy

Would you go to the courts of the poor to pick roses?
Nobody but death picks roses in the courts — the roses, the children:
He takes the most beautiful, he spares but few —
The court is the sentence of the poor.
And the mothers, O the mothers, who gave the roses to the world,

Who shall speak for them the protest that faints on their lips?
The hearse passes along the fetid alley, the flowers are picked with stern hand and tossed into it, the wheels are again started:
We hear the rumble of the wagon as it turns the corner of the street and is gone

The toy of the child of the court is death:
See, the child learns too well the lesson of its heritage: the child does not forget:
In its heart is revolution!

The orchard is loaded with fruit, the hungry man passes on the road — he does not stop,
Yet there is that in his heart which does stop, stealthily climbs the fence, plucks and eats the fruit —
O, it is that which must be met face to face some day in the open field.