Rhyme time
Poverty’s child

I am a child without any age

Becoming more black day by day

I suffer everyday in this cage

None to hear, none to say

I know not why my mother died

I know not who my father was

I know not when was I tied

With unbreakable threads of poverty

I am a dish-cleaner

I look ugly and wild

Life tortures me, I silently suffer

I am poverty’s child

They come and go with their parents

They drink and eat in lavish plates

I think about myself with aching dents

And compare for a moment our different fates

These lavish plates I wash and clean

With my hands, my dirty rotten hands

And in the shining plate I see my face unseen

As if I behold life, I assure not, it stands

At last, under the stars, with freezing wind

I lie on footpath and look at the endless sky

What has gone ahead, what has been left behind?

I think and drown myself in a deep sigh

Sushil Dutt, X-B,
Maharana Pratap Public School, Kurukshetra