Before sunset
In a bustling open market
In buyers
And sellers heart
Seeking a place
An emaciated old beggar
With a weather-worn face
Was pitifully collecting alms
Putting on tattered clothes.
Soon in a tear-jerking
And heart-wrenching manner
A poor blind boy
Playing a flute
Singing a song strong
Titillating everyone’s heart
Invoked sympathy with art
‘It was
On a cursed morn
Blind, to a pauper family
I was born!
If given a steal
Bread to eat,
How could I
Despise it? ‘
With no need for
A second thought
Deducting from what
The hardest way he got
Touched, the old beggar
Gave the sight-
deprived boy
A ten Birr note
Though both were
On the same boat!
The pitiful have pity!
Is the lesson,
among vendors and buyers
The incident drove home
Before draws nigh gloam!
It suffices to be a human
For benevolence to be done.
BY ALEM HAILU G/KRISTOS
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2023
