Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.

Like rootless weeds, the hair torn around their pallor.

The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-

seeming boy, with rat's eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir

Of twisted bones, reciting a father's gnarled disease,

His lesson from his desk. At back of the dim class

One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream,

Of squirrel's game, in the tree room, other than this.

On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare's head,

Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.

Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map

Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these

Children, these windows, not this world, are world,

Where all their future's painted with a fog,

A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky,

Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.

Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, and the map a bad example

With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal--

For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes

From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children

Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel

With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.

All of their time and space are foggy slum.

So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.

Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,

This map becomes their window and these windows

That shut upon their lives like catacombs,

Break O break open 'till they break the town

And show the children green fields and make their world

Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues

Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open

History is theirs whose language is the sun.

Poem written by Stephen Spender