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We Don't Want to Play With You


WE DON'T WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU

I

"We don't want to play with you."

How odd, I thought, but that is what he said.

Even a brand-new three-year-old
Pauses
When someone tells him that:
Especially someone who is happy
To be three
At a playground in the sun.

"We don't want to play with you."

"We"?

It was settled before they had come to play
Before they said it:
"We don't want to play with you."

Little brown boy
I want to cry.

II

I thought of a song from
Rodgers and Hammerstein's
South Pacific:

"You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught!"

We . . .
We don't want to play with you.

We don't know you.
You are just a little boy
Happy in the sun
Running around
Glad to be where the other kids are
But we don't want to play with you.

"You've got to be taught to be afraid
. . . of people whose skin is a diff'rent shade."

III 

When Barack Hussein Obama
Was elected Black to the White House
The Lost People who lost
Met and decided what to say

The economy had come tumbling down
So they had to pick their way
Through the rubble
The banks had left

Free enterprise has a high cost
Government had to do something

"What," David Obey asked the Republicans,
"do you have in mind for a stimulus?"

"I'm sorry," the kid in the playground said,
"but leadership tells us we can't play."
"We can't play."

We don't want to play with you.


Comments

  1. Su EvansApril 1, 2015 at 5:08 PM

    Always along the way
    We learn to respond to those in our way
    who think we are other than they.
    Too early we learn that others are a part of this life.
    Other is good in learning to care.
    Tough as it is, strong you will be, building the world that we elders have dreamed of for oh, so long before you were born.

    WE want to play, we other kids,
    to romp and laugh and hoot with delight.
    Curiosity and eagerness will take you far.
    WE want to explore the very sun and air with you.

    So know that many are waiting to play and laugh and explore.
    You will carry the day, Little One.
    Surrounded with love you are indeed, even from those of us you will never meet.
    Empathy and caring will be your new growth.
    Our future depends on you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Conrad RøyksundApril 1, 2015 at 11:50 PM

    Thank you for your tender response.
    And tough and strong he will have to be,
    he, and those who are our future.
    I do believe he is what it takes.

    ReplyDelete

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