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Justanotherhuman4/23/2015 2:33:22 am PDT

Maltese soldiers carry bodies of 24 unidentified migrants who died at sea at today’s interfaith ceremony.

vine.co

To paraphrase, any person’s death diminishes me. Since Donne didn’t live in the modern age, he wrote about his own world at the time but the poem itself rings even more true in the 21st century world and I don’t mean in a metaphysical sense but a material, even literal, one.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne