Son, I'm Sorry

 

Son, I’m sorry

We put you out on the streets

With a dirty bowl, and flies in your hair

To beg for the kindness of strangers

(Your father’s not much use, on his unsteady feet)

Just so tonight we could have a piece of roti

Digesting our love as we sleep.

Son, I’m sorry

You don’t know the ABCs

Or the complexity of one two three

As you look in on your should-be friends

Writing away on papers so crisp, and blue-lined

In their white shirts starched to perfection

And at their feet, steaming tiffins are waiting.

Son, I’m sorry

Your future friend is killed today

(They say it was a martyr as young as you!)

In a busy street where fathers drink coffees

And sisters giggle and brothers laugh and smile

And now mothers wail and tear at their hair, crying

Over blood on curbstones, and limbs torn into frays.

Son, I’m sorry

The trees are gone, and all the birds you once spied

Have flown further away than southerly south

In their places, a marvel of architecture sprouted

As tall as the mountains we mowed down

To keep the gadgets running in our expensive pads

Turn up the air-con, will ya?

It’s so damn hot in here.

Son, I’m sorry

You have to see that on TV

It’s Ok, you say, I see this everyday

People killing each other, people dying on the streets

Women and children, and the innocents shot at and bleed

You pick up the remote and surf the channels

And drool like a fool, as Paris Hilton frolics by the sea.

Son, I’m sorry

We give you guns to fight wars not your own

As you lurk behind smoking SUVs

We pray that your sophisticated night-vision goggles

And expensive bullet-proof vests live up to specifications

Just so you won’t return home

Draped in stripes in simple oak boxes.

Son, I’m sorry

We throw wastes in the seas and put holes in the skies

We have been ignorant

Surviving to feed our many obsessions

For scraps of paper that we invent

And prostrate and idolize much more than

The creator of these treasures - treasures we destroyed shamelessly

It’s only just now that our heads emerge out of the sand

Slowly, slowly.

Son, I’m so sorry

We’ve failed you

In so many ways.