My Friend Samuel
I still recall the early days,
Adventures without end
Of make-believe among the haze,
The games where I'd pretend;
An age of plain and simple ways
When Samuel was my friend.
As free as birds who love the air,
We shared our time and toys,
To be a child with Samuel there
Meant life was full of joys,
Revealing in each game and dare
The innocence of boys.
We fished beneath the skies of blue
At our own favourite stream,
We visited museums too,
United as a team
Until the winds of change that blew
And bred a new regime.
My mother told me what was what,
How every altered rule
Meant we had to accept our lot
But worst of all, most cruel
How Samuel certainly could not
Be my best friend at school.
And as she spoke her eyes looked down,
Ashamed of what she'd said,
Aware that in our little town
Great changes lay ahead,
We'd seen the men in shirts of brown
Flaunt standards of bright red.
A swastika is hardly vague
And now it lit a fuse,
The new regime none could renege,
From alleys to church pews
The mission was to stop the plague
Of unhygienic Jews.
I still recall the guards who came
To take my friend away,
Outside his house a mob became
Hysterical, for they
Assembled with a single aim,
To make the traitors pay.
There with his parents Samuel bid
Farewell to home and hearth,
Condemned despite the good they did
To walk a darker path,
Then Samuel glanced at me amid
The jeers of hate and wrath.
The look he gave escapes my pen,
A tear was in his eye,
Somebody spat in his face when
He waved his last goodbye,
I never saw him once again,
Nor did he once see I.
If Samuel could return we’d go
To fish, free of their clutch
And at the stream where ripples flow
His kindly face I'd touch,
I'd let my best friend Samuel know
How I’ve missed him so much.
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