Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road-long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go

Millions of Souls nineteen seventy-one
homeless on Jessore under grey sun
A million are dead, the millions who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Wet processions Families walk
Stunted boys big heads don't talk
Look bony skulls & silent round eyes
Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping and points to her sons
Standing thin legged like elderly nuns
small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer
Five months small food since they settled there

On one floor mat with a small empty pot
Father lifts up his hands at their lot
Tears come to their mother's eye
Pain makes mother Maya cry

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees
Bengali tongue cried mister Please
Identity cards torn up on the floor
Husband still waits at camp office door

Baby at play I was watching the flood
Now they won't give us any more food
The pieces are here in my celluloid purse
Innocent baby play our death curse

Breaking the line and jumping in front
Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt
Two brothers dance forward to Play hungry Tricks
The guards blow big whistles & wave bamboo sticks

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out
Thousands of boys & girls Take up his shout
Is it joy? is it prayer? "No more bread today"
Thousands of Children at once scream Hooray!

Border trucks flooded, food can't get past,
American Angel machine please come fast!
Where is Ambassador Bunker today?
Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?
Smuggling dope in Bangkok's green shade.
Where is America's Air Force of Light?
Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President's Armies of Gold?
Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?
Bringing us medicine food and relief?
Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for this pain?
Where can these families go in the rain?
Jessore Road's children close their big eyes
Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?

Whom shall we pray to for rice and for care?
Who can bring bread to this shit flood foul'd lair?
Millions of children alone in the rain!
Millions of children weeping in pain!

Ring O ye tongues of the world for their woe
Ring out ye voices for love we don't know
Ring out ye bells of electrical pain
Ring in the conscious American brain

How many children are we who are lost
Whose are these daughters we see turn to ghost?
What are our souls that we have lost care
Ring out ye musics and weep if you dare-

Cries in the mud by the thatch'd house sand drain
Sleeps in huge pipes in the wet shit field rain
waits by the pump well, Woe to the world!
whose children still starve in their mother's arms curled.

Is this what I did to myself in the past?
What shall I do Sunil Poet I asked?
Move on and leave them without any coins?
What should I care for the love of my loins?

How many souls walk through Maya in pain
How many babes in illusory rain?
How many families hollow eyed lost?
How many grandmothers turning to ghost?

How many fathers in woe
How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat
How many uncles with swollen sick feet

Millions of babies in pain
Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go

This is half the poem "September on Jessore Road" written by Allen Ginsberg after visiting West Bengal refugee camps.