Is it that you are rich and I, to you, am poor? Is it that you were born here, while I come from afar? That this land is not yet my land, but that it is yours? What is it that has you convinced that unaligned lay our stars? Is it that my grandfather was but a government clerk? Adding tallies all his life, there at his table at work, So many that, even as he lay on his deathbed, He could still multiply numbers in the thousands in his head? Is it that my mother grew up without running water in her home? That she had to go to the neighborhood tap, the family's ration card in tow, Every morning, to fill the family pail, at dawn before school? That, there in old Bombay, she spent her only childhood worked like a mule? Is it that she, being poor, Had me when she was only twenty-four? And being but a child herself, Hit me until I was twelve?
Do you imagine us embittered, our angers always at a boil? That painting rich men have made of us has never been true. I've found strength in learning to be happy in my toil, Through all that, for paychecks, I've been made to do. I've learned to work hard, and then, to rest. It is the rich, among all those I've viewed, Who, in matters of discipline and virtue, Always fail the test. See within me instead that stern, immovable, peasant-borne strength, Which kings and royals for millennia abused, yet leaned on for defense. That strength born, as peasants are, from cracks deep in the earth, yea, in fissures, Formed as they are driven into the ground by generations of rich men, demanding yet to be richer.
Let the world not place love between us far. I still wish for you, every night, upon the stars. Come here. The longing in your heart so clearly tells How the pain of heartbreak is one all classes know well. Let us sit together, and watch this world fight through its million growing pangs anew, Fight to realize that none should die from want, when so much of this world's fortune is held by so few, Fight to rediscover that the measure of a man has never been his wealth, That this world of unearned privilege and endless toil, with righteous fiery destruction, must be dealt, That one ought be owed a portion of the fruit his hands planted in the ground, That unity among men asks first for equality, ere it may be found.
