People Commingled 

Here let no man be a stranger! 
Let him accept himself with dignity 
  and others will accept him in gratitude. 
If he see an unfamiliar face,  unaccustomed eyes or skin, 
  or hear a strange accent, 
Let him know that beneath all difference 
  there is manhood,   womanhood, the same in all places. 
Let him know that there is one journey 
  upon which we are all engaged. 

The peoples of the earth  increase their numbers 
  and spread into each others' places. 
Inventions of men shuttle  people back and forth; 
the earth is ribbed with lines of freight. 

Men of islands in the sea find the solid heartland 
  of continents and ride  congealed waves of rock. 
Men of jungle villages see great and towering cities 
  and return to bid their people grow. 
Peoples of the sun ride its energy 
  and land upon a clearing in the snow. 
Men from eastern houses of meditation 
  carry the whirlflow of their thought 
  into the restless surge of western wizardry. 

Faster than the shadow of the sun 
  men move to their rendezvous, 
Voices in many tongues carry  across wave-bands of space, 
  and we know upon the  moment their joy or tragedy. 

Precision tools of brotherhood have been forged. 
  Who is the brother who will wield them? 
He who breaks the shell of narrow loyalty 
  And finds the yolk of human promise. 

This be a litany of brotherhood. 

East of me are brothers, though they march to the song 
  of a revolutionary poet. 
West of me are brothers, though they pile their stock 
  of lethal weapons and deter with overkill. 
North of me are brothers, though clad in furs 
  and sharing their wives with travellers. 
South of me are brothers,  though they leap 
  from junta to junta. 

I am brother. 
I try to contain multitudes 
Within my house of reconciliation. 

The Centred Self 

Guitar-sadness haunts the streets of new men. 
  In the morning of their lives 
  It is always evening, eve of destruction. 
Their songs are blowing in the wind. 

When dying wind blows through their strings 
  And darker night turns them to solitude and home, 
  The dirge they hear is that God is dead; 
He has died without fulfilling the promise. 

Neither by lightning from East to West, 
  Nor by trumpet blast and earth shake, 
  Has newly-minted Eden from a godly press 
Come to pacify the pain of man. 

Myth lies prostrate in the land, 
Its requiem is blowing in the wind. 
It blows through me and stirs a furtive phantom. 

Where before have I heard the fractured sound 
  of universal sadness? 
From the footfall of Buddha! 

They built stupas over his footprints 
  And halted the erosion of his eight-fold path. 
  Winds flutter the lonely prayer flags of the passes, 
And remote bells sound their paradox 

When asked of God, Buddha maintained a noble silence 
When asked of Soul, he folded his arms. 
When asked of the great peace to sweeten the salt, 
He said: not until every blade of grass has found 
Enlightenment. 


Let each man plumb himself; the deepest need 
  is where the closest knowledge is, 
  at the centre of your thought and the core of your pain 
  Find that, and you find the  inner consciousness of all. 

Centre down and reach the single point; 
Be lamps unto yourselves, clean-flamed. 
Having touched the awakening of one, 
You touch a multitude, and in yourself 
Mankind of many faces dwells 

You know the pathos of a paddy field, 
The raucous terror of an asphalt jungle, 
The phosphor-scar of delta battle, 
The ghetto of impotence. 

No need to march to embassies; 
Yourself an ambassador of man.