To have preached even for a moment
that money matters
more than the good it buys;
to have proclaimed the end of caring;
to have unmothered the State
and left orphans to the wind;
to have waged phony battle
on the homeless and fugitive,
the needy come to our door;
to have danced on a tally of the drowned
to have pursued the desperate
for electoral triumph;
these are your names
on the sea-bed at our shore-gate
behind razor wire
among the fatherless
the trapped and the destitute
and among the separated families.
Date: 2002
By: Judith Catherine Green Rodriguez (1936- )