Read the book: «An anthology of poems about life»

Compiler Ирина Брониславовна Юрченко

© David Roberts, 2026

© Ирина Брониславовна Юрченко, compiler, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0069-3276-0

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Everyone

Everyone needs the tender love of a mother,

To be able to understand and reach out to another.

Everyone needs the air to breathe, everyday of their life,

And a purpose for each day, to find a path, absent of strife.

Everyone needs to feel the sun and rain on their skin,

to feel hot and cold,

Pleasure and pain, to balance the mind

as we eventually grow old.

Everyone needs at times to laugh and cry,

The well of human emotions we can never deny.

Everyone needs to nourish the soul, some times god,

elusive power,

Others use reason and thought, each day and each hour.

Everyone needs affection and love, so it goes,

Why human beings are fragile, nobody knows.

Everyone needs someone to lean on and cherish each day,

A hand to hold on to and to show the right way.

Everyone needs nourishment and water to drink,

for the body to thrive,

Who will look after those in need, who will cry,

when justice is so often denied.

a child of the universe

I am a child of the universe since Helen of Troy,

I didn’t ask to be born, did not ask to die.

Caught up in someone else’s fights,

I had no choices, and given no reasons why.

A child of Rome before it fell,

of Gengis Khan and mongol hordes,

Many conflicts over the passage of time,

Killing, maiming and making orphans of children,

was always a crime.

A child of the universe born innocent and free,

victim of power, corruption and greed,

Decisions taken did not involve me,

Only dictators and whatever they need.

I am a child of the universe and died needlessly,

in the siege of Vienna, Leningrad and the cities of Spain,

In Poland and France and Vietnam, so many places

Where the perpetrators were insane.

Children of the universe wronged so many times,

can never be understood or reconciled,

Lives cut short, long before their prime, to the ongoing,

perpetual and eternal shame of mankind.

Wandering the earth

The lost people of the world are now on the move,

In vast numbers they wander the earth, their lives to improve.

Unwelcome and shunned by all as they travel,

Persecuted and blamed as their lives unravel.

Human souls no one wants, nobody needs,

Desperately seeking refuge, no one cares,

no ones heart bleeds.

Where can they go, where do they belong,

Why did it all go so badly wrong.

The conflicts are many caused by greed, excessive power,

History may record, humanities darkest hour.

They are the beggars at the banquet of life,

Most only know poverty, conflict and strife.

They arrive from the eastern and southern reaches,

With only hopes and false promises and regarded as leeches.

Their hopes sink like the boats in which they arrive,

Empathy has but vanished, morality struggles to survive.

Images are sent to remind each day,

Paralysed by ignorance we do nothing, because its our way.

The Spirit of the Past

The spirit of the past appears everywhere,

Greed, hunger, need and despair.

The shadows of the past are seen everyday,

Racism, hatred, armies march, into each and every fray.

The scores of the past are yet to be settled,

By so many countries in which, the powerful have meddled.

The crimes of the past are clear to heed,

The stolen land, the dispossessed,

testimony to aggression and greed.

The memories of the past are collective and long,

The rights of the past are now proven wrong.

The wars of the past are still fought today,

the faces are different, the leaders are new,

But the spoils and the gains, as always, only for the few.

The spirit of the future must be noble and brave,

If the whole of humanity, from itself, can ever save.

Forgiving

If crimes and passion are endemic

as long as people have been living,

It follows that everyone may be complicit,

in the act of forgiving.

From cradle to grave,

crimes of people exist everywhere,

Offences against anyone which feels unfair,

can run deep and hard to repair.

The weight of anger can be heavy,

sharp and vast,

Locked in the mind, and tethered

to the anchor of the past.

But when released, the spirit can be free,

of dark old scores,

Which through open skies can unlocked doors.

Forgiveness does not mean right or wrong,

Or recount the deeds,

which were formed there on.

Let the bitter chains of conflict break,

And free oneself for one’s own sake,

In forgiving we too are freed,

A sacred act and a human need.