Feb 2020
POVERTY AS A POEM
To use a statistic to describe poverty
is to turn a human being into a number,
the moral antithesis of compassion.
Yet The World Bank, The International
Monetary Fund, The United Nations
all use statistics when talking and writing
about poverty.
Nazis turned human beings into numbers
by using indelible ink when they wrote them
on the arms of those they soon were to ****.
One human being in poverty on Earth is
one too many.
My nouns and adjectives are different:
starvation, hopelessness, illnesses,
slums, violence, death.
There are over 2,800 billionaires in the
world right now.
How much has each given to end world
poverty? How many of them have held
in his or her arms the body of a child
who has died of poverty?
Not enough, not nearly enough.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
To use a statistic to describe poverty
is to turn a human being into a number,
the moral antithesis of compassion.
Yet The World Bank, The International
Monetary Fund, The United Nations
all use statistics when talking and writing
about poverty.
Nazis turned human beings into numbers
by using indelible ink when they wrote them
on the arms of those they soon were to ****.
One human being in poverty on Earth is
one too many.
My nouns and adjectives are different:
starvation, hopelessness, illnesses,
slums, violence, death.
There are over 2,800 billionaires in the
world right now.
How much has each given to end world
poverty? How many of them have held
in his or her arms the body of a child
who has died of poverty?
Not enough, not nearly enough.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and human-rights advocate his entire adult life. He recently finished his novel, A CHILD FOR AMARANTH.
