We Are But One
I saw this at the hospital my little niece was born in. It was offered as gift to the maternity unit by a “grateful former patient” and is a Farsi poem by Saadi Shirazi called “Bani Adam”. Here are the first few lines:
Human Beings are members of a whole
In creation of one essence and soul
If one member is inflicted with pain
Other members uneasy will remain
If you have no sympathy for human pain
The name of human you can not pertain
Saadi! I found out much later in life that a powerful French bureaucrat named Lazare Carnot was so enamored by Saadi Shirazi’s poetry that he named his eldest son Sadi (Carnot) of Carnot Cycle fame. We had to memorize this thing (the Carnot Cycle) in high school and I only understood what he was on about about 15 years later.