The Poets’ Corner:Poverty is simple

If you beg and you are given, you will eat.If you beg and you are not given you won’t eat.Or maybe you will steal.The morals are crystal clear. You either eat or you do not. Those are the rules of the game. No starvation is the goal.In wealth though, eat..But scorn the food.If you have plenty eat little and throw the rest away where humans can see themBut out of the reach of the starving dogs.Don’t steal. It is unfashionable.He advises. Then goes to office and steals the company’s resources in plain eyesight.In poverty, your neighbour is your friend.A brother in the struggle for food, and well being.Your neighbour will wake up at dawn to carry your son’s casket as the poor being is saved from a life of despair by some misplaced parasites.Or was it all a wormish plot to deprive you of your ticket out of squalor?In wealth, do not at all costs trust your neighbour.He is either a spy, a witch or both!The gate opens and a vague wave is exchanged.Was he waving at me or at the greenery behind me?Or was he swatting away an inexistent fly?So a rich man has few friends,It is our lot to bear in life they say.In poverty, it is moot to be jealous.You have one potato today,Tomorrow we will all starve.Our children will roam barefoot together till sundown.One of us will go at dusk and heave those painfully thinmalnourished bodies onto equally hungry shouldersand a weary walk commences. Where should I put this jealousy?In wealth the overweight silhouettes of our damaged childrenpeer afraid out of the windows of the limousine they take to school all dayThey listen to their parents rant on about Tom’s six inch TV.We have a 12 inch. Why are they quarreling?If I am rich, no one should be richer.Forgive me when I say,I crave simplicityAnd if I ever see you I will remind youMy child should be happyin torn shorts.Don’t think I won’t greet you,I will. According to peasant version,Hello and Goodbye.