The Children of Yemen

They cry before they learn to smile,

In the eye of the bloody storm,

The children of Yemen,

They play in the rubble adorned with

concrete toys belonging to boys in governments,

Who value money over man,

The slaughter over the lamb,

And the land over famine.

As they take their last breaths,

Their mothers are behest with the rancour

of rockets that fly ahead,

Keeping them awake when they sleep in their beds,

They imagine another life where they can eat food and bread,

And not worry about the daggers that drop

from the sky,

Whilst they whisper their last prayers to the shining power up high.

But God will not save them from the static deserts,

Where rows of stony slabs make morbid pavements,

Yet we forget the Holy infants that lie beneath,

As we sit in our living rooms sipping milky cups of tea,

Whilst we waste the abundance of what we have,

May we remember the children of the golden sand.

by Pippa Hill