Naomi Shihab Nye: Two Poems
To Israel
Are you sleeping well?
What do you tell your children, studying history?
It was so evil, that people could herd us
and hurt us, steal our homes
and crush our children.
The whole world knows
how evil it was.
Conundrum
My Jewish friends are kind and gentle.
Not one of them would harm another person
even if they didn’t know that person.
I would bet on this.
My Arab friends are kind and gentle.
Not one of them would harm another person
even if they didn’t know that person.
I would bet on this.
They might press you to drink 45 small cups
of coffee or tea but that would be the extent of it.
My Jewish friends have never taken my house,
my land, pressed me into a small cell, tortured me,
killed my parents, insulted my existence,
never once, not at all. If I have a tree, they admire it.
They don’t cut it down. Their ancestors
may have done that to mine and my ancestors
may never have recovered, but we are new people
now, and should behave as such. Try, try again.
The American way.
They respect me as an equal.
I have never said they should not exist.
They have never tried to erase me.
Vox Populi 
Thank you. Thank you for your poetry and your humanity in this world.
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Thank you, Naomi Shihab Nye.
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