Home Learning Task 1- Children In The Darkness

Today is Home Learning and our English teacher, Mrs. Lily Chai, wanted us to complete two tasks. One is to explain something about This Poem.

Children In The Darkness

There are children in the darkness
Who have not seen the light
There are children in the darkness
Who someone will teach to fight
 
Chalk and blackboards will not be
To this door there is no key
From this life they can not flee
And these children are not free
 
Could we simply light a candle
Could we give them half a chance
Could we teach them how to read
Could we teach them how to dance
 
Or will a war consume them
Their body and their soul
Will their life and blood be poured
Down some endless thirsty hole
 
Back into the darkness
From which there is no flight
Back into the darkness
Into which there shines no light

Henry M Bechtold was in Vietnam during 1967 - 1968. During that period of time, there was a war raging and he witnessed what was happening. Although he rarely talked about it, he could never close that chapter in his life.He was in his hotel room in Saigon watching the news channel on the television. At the same time, he was finding inspiration to write another poem on the mistreatment of girls by men when a picture of a young boy with a helmet and an automatic rifle in hand flashed on the news channel. This reminded him of the Vietnam war that happened during the late 1960s and immediately, began to pen down his feelings of the war and it resulted in this poem.