I watch but I don’t see. I close them out;
blindness is safe. To see them would take nerve;
how the old man relies on strangers’ kindness,
with dog and begging cup, there on the street;
how the old woman cries for her thinned hair
and the breasts that age has stolen; how the child
in Africa lies limply, not shooing flies
that rudely crowd his wounds, and the old wife
who tended her war-torn soldier remembers
her gladness that he came home, when his mates
returned as boxed possessions.

I should hear.
They may say nothing to me, but I’ll listen.