Why ?
April 14, 2016 · By Heinz Hof
Why?
Why are you, child, behind bars?
What have you done?
What have only the adults done to you?
Did you beg on the prestigious shopping street for money?
Did you bother the rich
with your outstretched, questioning, pleading, imploring dirty hands?
Did you put a chocolate candy in your mouth in a deli?
Perhaps taken socks, even shoes for your broken feet in the boutique?
Drank a Coke against the dire thirst in a supermarket?
Maybe you offered your little body…
against hunger, the cold and wetness
in your housing out of sheet metal and boards?
Now you sit with your dark, sad, lonely eyes
behind these terrible iron bars!
The empty can somebody left you!
The tiny hand holds it convulsively!
Why can’t we give children a home, where they
play, dance, jump, sing,
be merry…
in solidarity with us?
– Heinz Hof
