Today the Humanity Project offers two poems about humanity. The first is older and famous, a piece read at the funeral of Rep. John Lewis in 2020. The second is a new poem, with a very different point of view. The author of that new poem discusses both works at the end of this post.

I Dream A World

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom's way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind-

Of such I dream, my world!

(by Langston Hughes)

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I Too Dream

I too dream a world

but unlike worlds most

dreamed before.

Mine is a world

pocked by bickering and war,

snarling people

and barking mobs.

Oh yes, I dream of human beings

foaming yet with angers

and fizzing still with fears

bred by the familiar misunderstandings

among careless flung words.

All beings as themselves

so human,

then as now.

But all with one thing imagined

more for those living

in my vivid world anew.

Because my dreaming dreams of

future skirmish-wars defused,

our old hatreds resolving

in a new confidence of knowledge

that wedges aside the ancients

of myth and superstition

lingering indifferently

from millennia elapsed.

I dream of bicker noises

overtaken by song,

the transcendent hymn

of our humanity

crescendoing in a joyful ode

whenever the voices of dissonance

again rise to a din.

Oh yes, dissonance shall surely sound again

and often again in that world I dream,

disharmony intrinsic to a cosmos atonal,

a natural music playing ever out of key

in the chaos of clash and clatter

written into nature’s grand score.

We are organisms

fashioned of conflict.

Crossed purposes of interests and

crosscurrents of histories

will move us then as now,

the panting passions of our peoples

still puffed up and selfish centered.

We cannot be more than we are made.

But we need not be less.

Yes when I dream of human beings

being as the human finally fulfilled,

every member of our envisioned species

then understands that existence without

conflict has always been fantasy,

a conjuring of Utopia unattainable

amid a universe propelled

ever by the myriad colliding

streams of necessity.

Nature’s legacy to human beings

is conflict, oh yes,

but conflict resolved by reason

is humanity’s gift to nature.

In this world I dream about

judgment will nearly

balance out emotion,

the angers and fears of this moment

dissolving soon in the wisdom

of the next.

We cannot be more than we are made.

But we need not be less.

As an infant develops to a child

who ages to an adult

who may evolve to a

human being wondering and wise,

so humanity still toddles

toward our maturity,

wobbling step by

faltered step in

the long long childhood.

I dream this child standing

one day a young adult

proud and imperfect,

oftentime curious with uncertainty,

straining to discern the confusing paths

forward before advancing

forcefully in bold stride.

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A brief comment by Robert Spencer Knotts, Founder & President of the Humanity Project:

I was inspired to write my poem as a reply to the beautiful work you see above by Langston Hughes, the justly famous American poet who lived from 1901 to 1967. I’ve admired his poetry for a long time, since my late teens. But as much as I am moved by his flowing vision of a human Utopia in “I Dream A World,” I also feel it does us an injustice as a species in some way. I don’t believe a human Utopia is possible. But I do believe we advance as humanity, slow and uneven step by step, toward a more fully realized version of ourselves. That’s what I am trying to say in “I Too Dream.” And it’s what the Humanity Project is all about at some deeper level. We are a deliberately small but determined nonprofit focused on doing our best for a more fulfilled humanity… This is something we believe can be accomplished in part by teaching both kids and adults to recognize the profound value of other individuals: “Equality For Each, Respect For All!” In our imperfection, there is potential and, always, there is much much hope for the future.

Poetry Of Humanity

Bob Knotts