The Margin of Difference

One and one make two,
the literalist said.    
So far they've made five billion,
said the lateralist, or ten
times that, if you count the dead.

Copyright Credit: Les Murray, "The Margin of Difference" from Learning Human:  Selected Poems. Copyright © 2000 by Les Murray. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, http://us.macmillan.com/fsg. All rights reserved.

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Source: Learning Human:  Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000)