Poem: Children of Adam and No Man is an Island

Poem: Children of Adam and No Man is an Island

Shared Messages by Saadi Shirazi and John Donne

Presenter: Shahin Shabanian June 2015
In Farsi:
بنی آدم اعضای یک دیگرند
که در آفرینش ز یک گوهرند
چو عضوی بدرد آورد روزگار
دگر عضوها را نماند قرار
تو کز محنت دیگران بی غمی
نشاید که نامت نهند آدمی

Translation to English by M. Aryanpour:

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

These six lines of poetry were written by Saadi Shirazi (Saadi of Shiraz) in 1250 A.D. Saadi Shirazi (1210-1292), whose real name is Abu-Muhammad Muslih al-Din bin Abdallah Shirazi, took his last name from city of his birth, Shiraz; a Metropolitan city in Persia, the present central Iran. He is one of the major poets of Iran who has written two major collections.
He traveled widely throughout the Middle East, India and part of China and saw many wars, devastations and inhumanities which prompted him to write this poem. (The poem is also called “Bani Adam or children of Adam”).

Such sentiments are not rare and have been expressed by other poets, philosophers and concerned human beings. John Donne, the British poet (1572-1631) in his immortal poem, “No Man is an Island,” exclaimed this very point about humanity:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Ernest Hemingway, emphasized on the same concern not only by titling one of his famous novels “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” but inserting these lines on the first page of his novel.

In 1905 a compact version of this sentiment was coined; “An Injury to One, is An Injury to All.” This was announced as a motto, in the founding convention of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World).

Our task is that we must express loudly:
There is no “white race,” there is no “black race,” or “brown race,” or “red race,” …….. but the “Human Race.” And, we all are children of the Mother Earth, therefore, we also must stop the rape of our Mother Earth.

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