Arif Ahmad’s most recent poem to appear here was Where Are the Mandelas? The Gandhis? (November 2014).

Fundamentally One
By Arif Ahmad

For all our blood-spilling differences
How different are we really?
The anatomy taught in medical schools,
Is it different for Muslims, Christians, and Jews?
Don’t we all ave the same workings, the same physiology?
The same disease processes, the same pathology?
Or does the appendix lie different for a Shia or a Sunni?
Do the neurons in the brain transmit differently?
Does cancer afflict an Indian but spare a Pakistani?
Do Russians have two but Americans have one kidney?
Does aspirin work differently in a Palestinian than in an Israeli?
The blood on the ground that has not yet dried,
Is it red for one side, mulberry for the other?
Is the heart the part where the difference resides?
I doctor the heart and I haven’t seen that.
If all shades of skin cover the same within
Why such hate to this extreme?
We can hurt, kill
Play havoc
On this tiny planet, this pale blue dot.
But when all is said and done
We remain fundamentally one.