Century of the child

Issue 

Century of the child

em = By Denis Kevans

If you could look into their eyes as I do every day,

You wouldn't write the things you write, or say the things you say,

You wouldn't put these children down, and bruise their tender pride,

And hustle little bits of kids on the paths of suicide.
You wouldn't sit in plush armchairs and skol the whiskey down,

And say the kids are on the drugs, they're playing round the town,

They cannot speak a word of sense, or anything that's new,

Well maybe they have learnt too well for they have learnt form you.
Dole-bludger is a word you use, you on your big fat screw,

You hit them with it like a lash, it pays dividends for you,

You say they have no skills to work, but what about your tricks

In lying, cheating, falsifying, playing politics!
The skills you learnt are like the skills upon the butcher's floor,

Where carcases are marked and cut to the rattling pulley's roar,

The tricks of smear and counter-smear, the greasy path to fame,

And other tricks and skills you've learned in winning — that's your game.
The losers ... well, they're only young, they have no push or clout,

We do not want to share the cake, so lock the buggers out,

Let 'em swirl round on beach fronts where monsters sell them smack,

And when they're ghostly, white and dead, oh yeah we'll have them back.
What is it that's more precious in all the wide world round,

The numbers on a bit of scrip, the gold that's in the ground,

The metal cold in vaults grown old, the bullion in the bin,

Or the children with their wealth of dreams, and all the world to win.
Life doesn't last forever, life is just a passing day,

You turn around, the years are gone, your time has blown away,

Just knock the ashes from your pipe, they tumble in the breeze,

As you will blow in dust at last across the centuries.
I often wonder do you think just whose these children are,

Did they come here by rocketship from an unknown distant

Did they bubble up from ocean deeps inside the boiling clay,

Of an angry old volcano that was burping in the bay?
Were they carried here by magic spores upon some heavenly wind,

From a distant, dying planet where the parents never sinned,

Were they parcelled up in paradise, and by an angel, drawn

Down to a kindly cabbage-patch, like sunbeams, to be born?
Whose children are they anyway, whose children are these ones,

These dark and lovely daughters, and these tall and handsome sons,

Whose children are they anyway, be sure you're quick to own,

Flesh of your flesh and burning blood, bone of your brittle bone.
Their eyes are clear, they have no fear, their look is straight and true,

They're looking deep into your soul, they're looking straight at you,

They're asking are you dinkum, or are your words blowflies,

And is your mask of friendliness a mask of twisted lies.
Your eyes are worn and worried, your eyes are half-afraid,

To face the light that comes direct from eyes that you have made,

But why transfer your bitterness to these whose only claim

Is the love and understanding of the land from whence they came.
If you could look into their eyes as I do every day,

You wouldn't write the things you write, or say the things you say,

You wouldn't put these children down, and bruise their tender pride,

And hustle little bits of kids on the paths of suicide.

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