International: Through a Cloud of Dust

From iron-curtained Bulgaria the U.N.’s International Children’s Emergency Fund at Lake Success last week received a poem in praise of milk. It was written by an eleven-year-old girl, Marche Dobreva, inmate of Sofia’s Michena Greza Orphanage and one of 3,500,000 children in twelve European nations receiving supplemental food from the fund.

Marche wrote:

Come quickly to the dining room,

You who have overslept.

If there were no milk

I’d be tempted to sleep on—

A cup of fresh milk

Is drunk with great delight,

And that’s why, at this time,

We thank you, United Nations.

In the open window,

The sun shines through

A cloud of dust that is rising.

But we don’t mind,

Because we know

We drank milk today.

And now the microbes can’t harm us.

And that’s why, at this time,

We thank you, United Nations.