But I don’t know if I can write about
The children dying in the mists of war;
Or death squads, poisons, countries I ignore;
Or people I could learn to live without.
For I don’t know the worth of it—I doubt
Reactions would be won, just as the whores
Of Hiroshima, Prague, and Bangalore
Will not be won with guns, with death, with shouts
Of their Damnation scattered in their homes.
I doubt that words can heal, that words can cease
The orphans crawling through the catacombs,
Searching for a scrap of bread, and peace.
I do not know the worth of words that rhyme
Or medicines or kindness or my dimes.