Boys and Girls

Boys and girls
play in the yards,
in the streets and gardens.
They cry in their mother’s arms
and plead for more childhood.

Boys and girls
break their toys,
play while broken.
They hear their father’s sermon
and in autumn retreat from loneliness.

Boys and girls
discover themselves and at last
feel longing.

Boys and girls
lost the lap and the sermon
in the shelter of solitude.
They gained bills, broken hearts,
now swallow pills and drops of depression.

Those who survive now offer mother’s lap,
father’s sermon,
and never, ever, stop pleading for more childhood.

Boys and Girls#