IT NEEDS

IT NEEDS

It needs love the lovers

and the threatened family needs its chain mail.

Bread is needed and butter by the poor

and the long-term unemployed need coffee.

the hypocritical pious need pepper 

and clear water the fruitless preachers need.

The exhausted topsoil needs recreation

and out of all the implements of war it needs hand sickles.

It needs valerian for the hatred of the radicals

and for the esoterically confused it probably needs honey.

Mothers and their babies need milk against their fears.

and deprivation is needed by the sated.

It needs the failure of well-heeled stockbrokers

and the freezing migrant needs his protective coat.

It needs the good deeds of the rich man, so that he can

slim camel through the eye of the needle.

It needs the living God of the one who is dying

and it has His mercy the fallen humanity.