How Deep?

I used to write poetry in my teenage years - a lot of it. I still have it and looking back I believe it was my way of coping through some often trying times. There's some pretty deep and often disturbing words that made their way to paper, but thankfully will never see the light of day.

There is one though, that reading it, although written in 1986 for English class, shows how very little we have overcome over the past 23 years. It's called How Deep? and goes something like this:

How deep is that of those who love
The pitiful children of the world?
How deep is that of those who fear
For the children of the future?
How deep is that of those who weep
For the children starving worldwide?
How deep is that of those who hate
All the reasons that this is so?

If everyone really felt strongly about all this
Then why isn't something being done?
Why do children starve and die?
Why are we afraid for them?
If everything was so deep
Then all this shouldn't be going on
How deep is it really though?
How deep?

I still feel society is too apathetic at times. We are all too comfortable in our cocooned existence to really care. Oh we've become more aware of what's going on in the world, (largely in part thanks to the availability of information online) we've all jumped on causes of the moment, but still millions of children are dying from the lack of the basics - food, water, shelter.

Do I have any magic answer - put simply no. But as we all focus on the current financial crisis sweeping the globe and how it will affect us, take a moment to think of those touched not by the financial meltdown, but by the lack basic human needs they require to live.