Through Their Eyes
To the Chapek & Hrich Families
We were the kids society threw away,
Our parents worked hard to keep poverty at bay.
We played in dirt and with broken toys,
But some how we managed to be happy girls and boys.
We were subjected to corporal punishment in schools,
But for most of us we learned not to be fools.
Our cities were crowded and over run with crime,
And a lot of us didn’t make it to our prime.
We were born to large families and lived in slums,
But some how most of us became way more then just bums.
Some of us were children of immigrants, others just of the poor,
But we all faced the same closed door.
Before there was welfare to make a career of,
There were many hurtles we had to work hard to rise above.
There was no system on which we could depend,
It was for ourselves we were left to fend.
In family, religion, and country we were raised to believe,
Of our rights and freedoms we were not naive.
For the most part our futures seemed bleak,
But we worked hard to turn them bright, we were not weak.
We were forced to grow up hard and fast,
And the honor and pride of our days is a thing of the past.
To the history books we’re the nameless many, the little guy,
But it was our beliefs, lives, and sacrifices this country was molded by.
We helped to build the nation you no longer hold dear,
We sacrificed so much for current generations to forget; this is what I fear.
It seems as if our hard ships and trials were for nothing if no one learned,
It’s terrible, the direction in which this country has turned.
These maybe our four fathers thoughts if we could hear them beyond the grave,
as they look across this divided country they can no longer strive to save.
It seems as if we’ve forgotten the things they fought for and their numerous cries,
If we could only see things through their eyes.
(2007)
Written in memory of the way the world was when my family arrived in the early 1900's from Bohemia (now the Czech republic)
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