NO MEN ARE FOREIGN - JAMES KIRKUP (Poet)
Before you read
Have you ever thought of some people as strange, or other countries as ‘foreign’? We have many ways of thinking of other people as different from ‘us’, as ‘them.’ ‘ They’ may belong to a different country, or speak a different language. In this poem, however, the poet reminds us of the many ways in which we are all the same — for we are all human.
Poem
Remember, no men are strange, no countries foreign
Beneath all uniforms, a single body breathes
Like ours: the land our brothers walk upon
Is earth like this, in which we all shall lie.
They, too, are aware of sun and air and water,
Are fed by peaceful harvests, by war’s long winter starv’d.
Their hands are ours, and in their lines, we read
A labour not different from our own.
Remember they have eyes like ours that wake
Or sleep, and strength that can be won
By love. In every land is the common life
That all can recognize and understand.
Let us remember, whenever we are told
To hate our brothers, it is ourselves
That we shall dispossess, betray, condemn.
Remember, we who take arms against each other
It is the human earth that we defile.
Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence
Of air that is everywhere our own,
Remember, no men are foreign, and no countries strange.
Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK