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, 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 common life

That all can recognise 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.

JAMES KIRKUP

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.