Come. And Go.

POETRY. SOCIETY. A poem for Christmas

I wrote this poetry a few years back when things hit a low point for me. It was at that point that my thoughts turned to those whose lives are at low points, wherever they are; and, within an hour, I'd written this. It's not fantastic, it's not Wordsworth; but it's as heartfelt as anything Wordsworth wrote; a few words' worth, at least.

Come. And go.

If, in lives so replete with come and with go,
And bustled together on a Paris metro,
The folk who shared this conveyance delightful,
Who’re smart and clever and so ever insightful,
Would stop,
For a while,
And then hop
O’er the stile
To an existence they once viewed as so dreadfully frightful,
Why, then they’d be tramps with no food nor abode,
Rejected and desolate: dogs with no bone.
In hand, paper cup gleaning coins at the lights,
But no one to cuddle when cold are the nights.
What thoughts would they spare then for one who despairs then
Enough not to be low but also to kneel low
And pray the Almighty might render a blow
To his neck or his heart that he, too, might go
To a place close to heaven, an end to his woe?

Give not then this Yuletide your coin to rejoice;
Give solace, compassion, give pity, and voice
To injustice and favour and blind bleeding luck,
And help now your fellow rise out from the muck;
Or, send white lily flowers to his funeral day.
Save your coin now: 
His doom is near, now,
Not, now, so very far away.

The power of change lies not deep in you
But in God, or Mohammed or spirit sanctu.
Ours isn’t to reason, we’ll never know why.
The poet spoke true: we do and then die.
So, you bustle, and cuss and on metro you go
While the waste at your feet lies in motionless limbo
’Twixt death, on one hand: would you will it?
And, well, what on the other?
Whence he hails 
Concerns not a whit.
Would it puzzle to know
He is your brother?