A Safe Haven

Fingers taken away by a hot breeze
blown by a gentle small device
planted outside her school
Adila cannot hold a pencil
but she can spell despot.
Motherless and luckless,
the boy without a name
with neither food nor home 
dreams about tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Wet faced, lump-throated,
the Windemere Kinder,
voices frail on the wind,
look on in wonder
at the hands that would now
push them back
into gas chambers
and walk clean away
with neither thought nor regret.
While we the lucky ones,
pink faced accidents of birth,
lamely shake our heads 
when we should be shaking throats
in the land that once was proud
to be a safe haven.

Harry Gallagher