Fears I cannot claim to understand My parent’s fears as they did - - Just their results Their world began in A time of soup kitchens and A stream of losses and declining expectations. Until the bedlam of tyrants Rose with bloody tank treads and Endless Asian bayonets Always in fire and smoke in Grainy black and white newsreels Showed the world staggering into darkness. Moloch like until even the most atavistic Of that ancient god of burning babies Must have come near glutting their Endless, bottomless appetite. They came from coal reeking towns Of the east, From cities with endless empty shops From dust bowls Ghettoes and the quiet desperate farms Which could no longer feed their own children And pass on nineteenth century hopes They rose to pay the butchers bill. No one in the posed black And white images of children straining To look an adult world in the face In school yearbooks or Desperately tidy living room mantles As they pretended to be Grown up and ready to face The next thing thought Of ideals or dreamed beyond Shouldering their share. Tanstaafl There ain’t no such thing as a Free lunch As one of them was to write In defiance of being unable to pay The tab. |