EIGHT LITTLE CHILDREN

She only wishes that she can stop and smell the roses in her hand.
Speak up. Stop child labour. You can make a difference.

Eight little children carrying lamps that lit up a wedding

Are walking down the street, burden on their shoulders,

Smiling all the while, admiring the festivities, the dancing

Ignorant of the danger looming over their heads, the loose boulders.

Eight little children carrying lamps that lit up a wedding

Are walking down the street, burden on their shoulders,

Smiling all the while, shining their bright lights upon the dancers

Joy in their own lives the light they carry is never bringing.

Eight little children carrying lamps that lit up a wedding

Are walking down the street, burden on their shoulders;

A thought never crosses the dancers’ minds,towards these holders

Of the light that shines not in their's, but the lives of the people prancing.

Eight little children carrying lamps that lit up a wedding

Are walking down the street, burden on their shoulders –

And a humble poet follows, a defender of the law wondering

Why his mouth does not move in protest for these little lantern bearers?

Look my Good Lord, and thus like the lawyer are all the world’s men

Who are not humans, rather asses that bray and peacocks that boast but when

The time for action passes, we do nothing but perpetuate

The sorrow of darkness that these children are too ignorant to hate.

Fie upon the World for being an unjust being, and the actors for seeing

And yet perpetuating justice among every human being:

Justice that denies eight little childrenthe right to speak and say,

“Why do I carry this light upon my shoulder, tell me, I pray?”

The world is cold, wretched and cruel for these eight little children;

Their sorrow be ended, and slowly,gradually their burden

Be removed from their aching shoulders only by Death,

Who sitting upon his mighty black steed, withdraws the children’s breaths.

And yet Death be cruel as the rest of the world for he comes not soon;

He’s content in their sorrow, and unwilling to take them beyond the moon.

All the while the lawyer looks, for his look will alleviate the suffering;

But lo, the children continue to walk, the load of the lamps their shoulders bearing.