For Those People /Still Alive/ Who Have No Real Life (Another Caregiving Poem) Poem by Shalom Freedman

I write these lines
For the endless futility of life
For those people
Who still alive
Have no real life
For those living and breathing
Who cannot have a moment of joy
Or true rest
For those gone and lost
Injured forever
By illness or war or terror
Or some other abominable non- justifiable evil
They never anticipated or knew
Would be theirs -

For this man sitting next to me now
Who I cannot help
No matter how I try
For the disabled suffering
Irreparably damaged
Poor souls
Who never will have a way out
In this world -

Oh God where is Your mercy?
And where is our human power to help?
And where is just one moment
Of pleasure or satisfaction or ease
For this endlessly troubled and discomfited man
I sit beside and cannot help now?