That A Little Child Will

Sometimes We Become So Sophisticated We Have To Read The New York Times In Order To Figure Out Whether It's A Hot Or A Rainy Day.

When We Heard About The Hippies, The Barely More Than Boys And Girls Who Decided To Try Something Different ... We Laughed At Them. We Condemned Them, Our Children, For Seeking A Different Future. We Hated Them For Their Flowers, For Their Love, And For Their Unmistakable Rejection Of Every Hideous, Mistaken Compromise That We Had Made Throughout Our Hollow, Money-bitten, Frightened, Adult Lives

That A Little Child Will Lead Us Back To The Child We Will Always Be, Vulnerable And Wanting And Hurting For Love And For Beauty.

I Wrote Those Poems For Myself, As A Way Of Being A Soldier Here In This Country. I Didn't Know The Poems Would Travel. I Didn't Go To Lebanon Until Two Years Ago, But People Told Me That Many Arabs Had Memorized These Poems And Translated Them Into Arabic.

What Tyranny Could Exceed A Tyranny That Dictates To The Human Heart?