Excerpt from
"City Streets
  After 9/11" © ®
by Anne MacMillan

"The Beggar's Lament"

 
  Look at them
  Sitting at their fancy tables
  sipping their lattes - 
  American pseudo-proliferation

  So, now, 
  while all the dust whirls round and round 
  and shifts to make a pathway -
  What do we do, 
  but sigh and relent the end of day - 
  God, 
  does He know why?

  Grass is green 
  but concrete dust is over all -
  Ghosts
  racing madly
  no shoes on -
  Solid flesh and wraith forlorn

  Falling, towards who knows where

  Feel your cheek - scratches there
  On your forehead - grains of sand
  Is it fair, 
  that all is lost 
  for those who lost?
  None have won for those undone -
  Bitter enemy - on others' land. 
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