Poems for human rights - your suggestions please

I've spent the last few hours reading about torture and genocide and it's time to elevate the mind to finer things before bed.

It's National Poetry Day, so I have chosen my favourite human rights poem and reproduced it below for our mutual elevation. It's From the Republic of Conscience by Seamus Heaney, a favourite of mine since school days, with the squat pen resting between my finger and my thumb.

Heaney composed the poem to mark the 25th anniversary of Amnesty International in 1986 and, some years back, I had the good fortune to hear him read it at an event in Dublin.

I hope you enjoy it, but then please – to mark this day of poetry – why not use the comments section to share your favourite poem for human rights?

From the Republic of Conscience

by Seamus Heaney

I

When I landed in the republic of conscience

it was so noiseless when the engines stopped

I could hear a curlew high above the runway

At immigration, the clerk was an old man

who produced a wallet from his homespun coat

and showed me a photograph of my grandfather

The woman in customs asked me to declare

the words of our traditional cures and charms

to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye

No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.

You carried your own burden and very soon

your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared

II

Fog is a dreaded omen there, but lightning

spells universal good and parents hang

swaddled infants in trees during thunder storms

Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells

are held to the ear during births and funerals.

The base of all inks and pigments is seawater

Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat

The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,

The hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.

At their inauguration, public leaders

must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep

to atone for their presumption to hold office

and to affirm their faith that all life sprang

from salt in tears which the sky-god wept

after he dreamt his solitude was endless

III

I came back from that frugal republic

with my two arms the one length, the customs woman

having insisted my allowance was myself

The old man rose and gazed into my face

and said that was official recognition

that I was now a dual citizen

He therefore desired me when I got home

to consider myself a representative

and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue

Their embassies, he said, were everywhere

but operated independently

and no ambassador would ever be relieved