To Rich To Smile Poem by Douglas McClarty

So many people, walking, going nowhere
The smells, the sounds, the poverty facing me
The smiles from children lift the darkness
As we mingle in the sweltering Mumbai streets
The noisy avenues, cars avoiding sacred cows,
tuk-tuk's of every shape and size, honking horns
Dabbawalla's delivering food to hungry mouths
Bodies lying under filthy blankets hands held out
I feel like a white living ghost among dead souls
They stare, no fear of me, or me of them as I pass
I watch sack clad bodies shuffle past looking in bins
for a morsel of rancid food to satisfy their starvation.
And yet I have seen more smiling faces in a moment
here, than I have seen in western streets of wealth