Inspired by the brouhaha over Madonna, the pop star, adopting a Malawian child David Banda.
Madonna and the Child
Madonna and the Child-The Rich and the Poor,
Strong, bold and beautiful,
Weak, hungry and the destitute-
Two Worlds apart;
Two Worlds coming together;
Or falling apart?
Propaganda, politics
Or pure act of humanity
of a human heart?
On the one hand is
The overfed, gorging on high calories,
the opulent 'civilized' world;
On the other, the undernourished,
AIDS-ridden, starving world.
On the one hand
Excess crops are destroyed,
To avoid the prices of grains from going down,
On the other,
not enough grows, crops fail,
Rains are scarce, famine all year round...
Would it matter if the two worlds
Came together on some ground?
They say the child should stay
In his own environment, in his own town,
As if he is an endangered species-
An elephant or a lion cub,
Who would not survive in another habitat?
Who would better stay
in his own Savannah to survive-
A conservationist's stance!
They say
it is better he stays with his father-
a father who cannot feed him?
Who left him in the institute for the destitute
So that he can be fed,
An institute already overflowing
With teaming millions of orphaned children,
Who lost their parents to disease,
AIDS, wars, ethnic conflicts or famine...
They say it is a publicity stunt-
I say, even if it is, then
of all the publicity stunts
that Madonna, the pop star,
has resorted to in the last 25 years
(and she has resorted to many bizarre ones)
I think this is the most humane one...
They say it is not enough,
What about the other 48 million,
Languishing in those institutions?
What is the harm, I say,
Even a drop in the ocean is enough-
Wouldn't a thousand million such drops together
Make a river of humanity flow?
I would rather wish, this went out as
a message to the rest of the world-
Let every German, Scandinavian or American,
Adopt an orphaned child from
Dafter, Malawi, or Cape Town...
In fact I would like to dream
still further and wish
that let every rich, well fed nation
adopt a poor nation of the 'developing' world-
Say goodbye to starvation,
Disease and war...
Let the two worlds come together-
And not fall apart...
Let there be no war, no disease, no starvation-
Let there be peace, progress and healthy nations...
Author: Zoya Zaidi
Aligarh (UP), India
Copyright ©: Zoya Zaidi
Poetry by Zoya Zaidi
Read 807 times
Written on 2006-11-16 at 23:07
Tags Humanity
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