Suppose I had stayed in this town or lived in another city,
Imagine I had travelled further or not so far from here,
suppose I had stayed in Benin or gone to Greece,
or that i was the same version of myself in Hong Kong.

Suppose that I was buff and my brother was skinny,
And he was the bookworm, and I the wild one.
Would we have ended up being close knitted or would we still be unmeeting parallels?


would we be the same or different?
Would we have switched our  identities,
Would we have become the other's mirrored image?
Would we,
Raymond and I?

Put it like that, and I know
that we would not and could not.
Through all sorts of similarity, we cannot
reach each other’s goals.

The light in our lives comes from the same star,
and we’re left with friendship,
Even as the shadows of brotherhood and kinsmanship lengthen each moment
and the old one, of rivalry, fades into the night,
We're our own identity.
Unique in our small ways
but similar in our general choosing.