Hear the tappety-tap of steel wheels
on steel tracks. Hear the rattle and clank
of the Burma Siam as it echoes down
Time's black tunnel of night.

Sick, starved stick-men built that track,
with beaten backs and feeble hands
that weakly clasped a few primitive tools.
Across mountains and rivers,

through jungles, disease, and death;
POW's and Romushas labored with bodies frail
to lay those rails. Naked slaves they were,
with all human dignity stripped away!

Now, in the day's light, some speak with fright
of their dreams at night and what lay under
those rails. They tell of hearing, in the dead of night,
skeleton men begging to be pulled out to the light.

Hear the tappety-tap of steel wheels
on steel tracks. Hear the rattle and clank
of the Burma Siam as it echoes down
Time's black tunnel of night.

Mary Naylor

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ballad-of-the-burma-siam-railroad-warning-gr/