We are all so different I don't see how we could fail to be alike: A few horizons added to a man's dream: do they make one man better than another? A few inches added to a man's waist: do they make one man superior to another? From way up these are such minor matters: the wave drops away in the sea: From way up our castes and borderlines are such minor matters: they lapse away in the soul: For we are in the end not masters and slaves, not up and down: we are only brothers and sisters. WHAT IS THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN? What is the color of your skin? Are you a child of the sun or a child of the snow? Do you come with red in your face? Or is there a shadow across your head? Are you the white child of a black mother or the black child of a white mother? I see your brown red right hand. How warm it feels to me. I look into your glowing equatorial eyes. How like being led to fathers and mothers that is. You bring me north south east west. You guide yourselves to me. You distribute me among yourselves. I am your child no matter how. Your child no matter where. There are seas everywhere. But there is no sea between us. There are interfering miles of space and hours of time. But they dont break us from each other. I was born of my mother and here I am. You were born of your mothers and there you are. The earth was born of the sun. The sun was born of what? I mix up the elements. I come out one place. You come out another place. From the same mother womb. From the same father seed. To the same brother earth. Do you hold a noose over me? Or drop a sword from above as I pass? Or shoot me down in my tracks? Or pass laws of which I'm the victim? Or lock your housedoors when I knock? My credentials are the same as yours: no better than yours. I am the harvest of the same planting: no more than that harvest. Like you I have one life to live on one earth before I pass on. Do I stand on my icy heritage and freeze the heat out of your love? Remember the stream: go up with it to its sources: go down with it to the sea. Every atom dancing in the light or clouded by the storm advances and retreats in perfect equity and perfect order. Dear prouds and humbles: by God I'm yours and you're mine. Do you believe that anything can take you from me or take me from you? I meet you. I read about you. I am told all the terrible truths. But everything draws me nearer. Nothing drives me away. If you could be less to me than I am to myself then I would have to be more to myself than I could be to you. That would violate my democracy. That would be setting one thing above another. When I elevate myself with all I am a democrat. When I lift myself above the rest I am a tyrant. Listen to me. You who are reading what I write. Maybe you are black. Maybe you are pink or white or yellow. Maybe you are between or across. All that goes with maybe. But when you are my brother there is no maybe to it. If I could look at