XUNICEF News and Views

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Richard Morgan. Special Advisor to the Executive Director on the SDGs How old do you feel? As of today, around 60, although I am 70.

Dear Colleagues and Friends, I have just returned from another visit to Lesotho, where malnutrition rates remain very high indeed. Child stunting and anaemia among children and women remain major challenges, as do poor diets and poor health more generally. Through my organization, I've been honored to be asked to help the Government in its ongoing planning to address malnutrition through multi-year, multi-sectoral approaches (health, agriculture, social protection, etc) and resource mobilization efforts. If you would be interested to work with me on this challenge going forward, or know other colleagues who might be able to lend relevant expertise, please let me know (directly, I suggest). Thanks so much and best wishes to all. Richard richgmorgan@hotmail.com

You will not see it advertised It has long escaped from fashion But the visa application’s free For the Nation of Compassion

He is so often there  Corner of 44th and Lexington  At the breakfast hour  Tall and thin, matted hair Roughly shaven  With his jeans and cane  Talking to the buildings and the air 

I never expected to live so long In those shell-shocked years when the cancer came In the proliferate shadow of the nuclear bomb With wars fanning out like toxic flowers It was hard to believe and grow up tall Without a shield or a place to fall.

Our pharmacy is closing

In dreams I watch the desert plain As the light fades from the scene My gaze towards the borderline Where the parched fields turn to green

The horses on a hillside Grazing in the sun Creatures never ridden No pulley for a cart Dark and sleek and careless Heavy in their English field Muscled in the heart Descendants of the Pegasus Strong and stubborn born To carry an unbroken line Out running our human time Run for water, run from fear For food, run from a man For a filly, to a child Eating from an infant hand A stallion running over here Approaching my despair Bearing me no harm, I see Sunlit creature from a field Caught in the need for nurture And the longing to be wild Teach me to be careless too Show me how to follow Tracks cut through the meadows deep In the land of Blake and Keats Cutting through their tragedies Into the dens of night Tracks to guide the horses home Trails to bring them safely in Where they spread their ancient wings And escape in flight. ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

Men were sent to war Beasts corralled by shame Crouched deep in the trenches  Knelt in blood and bare Of reasoning and name Men saw prison slavery Years of death without reprieve Stowed away by press gangs Without a tailwind or a breeze Men were born in labour Lashed and fastened to the plough Scratching their small acre To put a harvest into store Men lived immune but not before Many were embraced by AIDS Men were tortured on the rack Torn and hung up by the neck Blackened in the press and grave For one idea they had to say Strangled by conformity By high priests of the day Men were lately called upon To slay the greatest mastodon To break their bones on the castle wall To make the sacred pilgrimage To take the mountain and the fall Men were unmanned For remembering they were boys Broken if they dared To learn to write beatitudes Or speak lightly as a girl Men were exiled in transportation For stealing a crust of bread For stealing a deadly kiss Daring to think of love and dreams ...

We thought ourselves godly Taught ourselves how to fly Now our engines are grounded And birds rule the sky Just one more species Climbing high but to fall Inventive and heedless Mortal souls after all Creature of singing Contemplation and art Educating our children In the ways of the heart And creature of cruelty Plundering with no need Killing sister and brother In our prisons of greed When we beg for survival In the suffering crowd We must live by compassion And speak kindness aloud. Easter, 2020 ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

Will the trains still run on time Will there be cherries at the stall Will the sun rise, at all . They are insisting we must be prepared (for what? And how?) To lose our trousers and our shirts But do not bet against us (Even naked, even now) I ask about the Little Ones Daddy where did it go wrong Why can't we see the neighbours They won't talk our language Do us any favours Will there be bandages Will there be tea Words to close the distances Dividing you and me Are there lights down in the tunnel Smell of whisky in the air Boots on my street, the sorrow sweet The exit labelled fear ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

Bryant Park, October, hard against the granite fence of New York Library, exotic and home foods in autumn trade, The sun insistent by its weakness as your servant here, stalking the footlights of the city play perpetually, at least Until the work, the vision of the fall give in. Winter crouches in wait mode, the heart prepared for its white sleep, her snow shroud terminal you see before it strikes too late. So meet me here, midday Defy the crowds and seasons passing by Before the shadows do their work, and sunlight runs to hide. Like Time Square balladeers, pick- pocketeers, we’ll snatch a cent a scented kiss from sentences away Taunting the hard and heavy march of day. ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

99 cent New York pizza I've no taste for it at any price I’m happier over there in England With the hopelessness and irony And the peerless Vindaloo (on rice) You know what they say about me? That my best work is behind me And is clearly out of fashion Yet some notable from Yale Writes to me - quite reverently Citing my "towering reputation in the field" I was not aware, my darling I had no idea, I swear I just work now to survive Thousands of colleagues saving lives Child death rates fall, that’s all I care These working years are almost gone This is written for the one to come Who might some day be wondering What her loving Dad was thinking In the evenings he would leave her For the late night flight to England For a sweet taste of the sullen atmosphere. ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

Increasingly, she troubles me I'm seeing her lately as light blue In an auto-suggestive state Sometimes with a tinge of red A Queen's Guard helmet on her head   And I can't keep track at all Of the hours of her rising Her weeks of wax and wane Sure, you'd assume That a man on a planet with just one moon Would be capable of following her plane.   Yes, she troubles me Even when she shines on me Makes me feel like an alien  Misplaced in the city, sensing at best That I'm not where I was born to be.   The moon can be dangerous, too She can snare you with a tide And pull you under, reach down low Breaking up your wedding vows As you slowly sink and drown In dark pools of reflecting eyes   Not even wise To try to write a poem about the moon Her smile is concealing bad intent And she’s jealous of her font of light Just waiting for something to condemn In the affairs of boys and men. ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

Always carry a new pair of socks When you embark on a long plane ride

Shower with a touch of gel Shaving with the weather girl Felons and stock market news Coffee brew with cinnamon E-checking on the mails Numbers of the suffering The memories and darkness Questions of the mysteries My legs are weak and ache some days Most days my legs are strong For life’s burgeoning of loss The freight on every train Talk of shoes and real estate Disneyworld ways of escape Such torments don’t distract me I am writing for the cause For the justice and the love Sign-off from the 13th floor And maybe from the one above I climb this hillside every day Hopeful and anxious as I sing To reach first base, the very place Where work for children may begin. ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

The coffee drips I make the eggs Put on my shirt Slick back my locks And go to work

The cup of Mercy is so small Its drops are few Too greedily We thirst to drink them all Mercy holds the well of life As songs and fables claim So humbly from this cup We seek the source of nourishment And we become the same In Mercy lifted up Our kindest acts of Love performed Above this almost-empty cup. ***** Click here for  more poems by Richard Morgan

Never forget how peace awaited you,  the joy you felt, the passion that you made as Yankee tanks rolled down your streets and shook your bedposts thunderously. Or was it you? The nightmares fade as window shards on cobbles laid,  glinting in the newborn sun by stones once thrown to bring them down. The ships were hunted too, sunken and drowned their cargo holds of refugee humanity capsized too far offshore, lost to the promised lands, but not erased from history, the sins of the descendants and surviving few are never washed to sea.  For history will not forget so soon. For me, the Shofar's calling, its caress upon the curves of Pomeranian hills, the trysts the magical, unfettered hours with you, but now pleasure is scarce, and one must pay in currency of life's regret the moments have to find their end, our lives tied to the ruined plough that furrows on the fields we sowed. We can't forget  the love we made in war's confine. ***** Click here for  more poems by...

The aircraft in ascent, I swore To write something of beauty, that would prove Enough to lighten hearts, and cause The world to celebrate, elders of Zion & Palestine convert each other To a peace of faith, the scientists Of terror & martial machines To dance together in the lands they freed And donate to those in need. The husbands Of war-widows be restored. The tortured To return to the genesis of pain, Smiling at torturers whose hands Will not be raised again. The souls Burning in loneliness of love be healed By cool streams of compassion Received without demand, given without aim. The children born in poverty be lifted by Abundant arms & those abused Finding the shore  Where nothing will be fearful anymore. Can some mere mess of words provoke all this As if a Declaration, made to last By desperate hope & stubborness? Can it hurt in the attempt? Advance  The cause of our humanity an inch, even a step?  It's a long and weary flight and there's  A bab...