Sonnet

We have our names. We don our clothes,

wear Sunday-shoes,

we note the trinkets that our neighbours wear

but only rarely, after death,

to them, the dying, do we administer pills.

In lavish rags our age is dressed.

Thou supportest nothing, Thou art useless, roof-beam.

Has anyone been cured as yet?

A tatty Bible once read by

lucky old Job himself, after he got out of hospital,

lies somewhere on the floor.

And old God, Our Lord of Slums,

administers cold, sickness, hunger and suffering

in handfuls.

--

[Jirí Orten (30.8.1919 Kutna Hora - 1.9.1941 Prague). During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, Orten, who was Jewish, was unable to publish under his own name. He died after being hit by a German ambulance.]