Ye gods! circumstances compel me speak
Ye gods! using children as target practice;
From the first of the world
Down to our own time
Don’t frown, don’t shake your head,
Listen to this elegy for the innocent dead.
For soldiers silenced, banned,
expelled, made as if dead.
Life continues for some but the crops in Galilee
Are no longer joyous.
goats and sheep forgot, humans will not
Some say: be thrifty with feelings, 
conserve words we were taught to moderate ourselves with
when we sought to cultivate the goodness of mankind
to feel free. to express our point of view, to just be.

………

Now, fauns and dryads allow us to sing with unfettered ease
So long as we stick to the script, do not upset the ship,
Now, we must leave our native towns and easy afternoons,
and go to war with words. 
Such fighters are spat upon by those who choose the forgetful, compliant life:
job, comfort, money, wife.
Help and succour for the innocent
relies upon the army's response, but some have no defence, what then?
We all can speak of our loves and losses:
the sea and land and sky made sick by man’s poison
But if we give up on protecting innocent children
it is too late for any of us.

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• - title/quotation from Henry Louis Gates, Jr