LET US BE WORLD CITIZENS

 

                                LET US BE WORLD CITIZENS

The whole world is one. It is divided into many countries but all the people are alike. They have similar bodies, eat similar diets, fall prey to similar diseases, get similar medicines, are warmed by the same sun, receive rain from the same sky, rivers flow from one country to another, boys and girls  have similar educational systems, love and hate in the same way, dress themselves almost similarly, have identical views about crime and punishment, sin and its punitive consequences and  worship the same creator by different names.

By definition a world citizen accepts the dynamic fact that the planetary human community is interdependent and the whole humankind is essentially one.

Given below are extracts from a poem titled “No Men Are Foreign” written by a professor of English literature James Kirkup (1918 -2009). He says:

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.

…………………………

Remember they have eyes like ours that wake

Or sleep, and strength that can be won

By love. In every land is common life

That all can recognize and understand.

 

And to conclude :

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.

 

G.R.Kanwal

9^th May 2024