Consider If This Is A Man

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
            Consider if this is a man
            Who works in the mud
            Who does not know peace
            Who fights for a scrap of bread
            Who dies because of a yes or a no.
            Consider if this is a woman,
            Without hair and without name
            With no more strength to remember,
            Her eyes empty and her womb cold
            Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
            Or may your house fall apart,
            May illness impede you,
            May your children turn their faces from you.

- Primo Levi

Posted at 8pm on 27/01/05 by Jack Mottram to the politics category.
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Tags: literature, poetry