Vox Populi
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Naomi Shihab Nye: Jerusalem
“Let’s be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let’s fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.”
—Tommy Olofsson, Sweden
.
I’m not interested in
who suffered the most.
I’m interested in
people getting over it.
Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.
Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
“I am native now.”
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child’s poem says,
“I don’t like wars,
they end up with monuments.”
He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.
Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it’s ridiculous.
There’s a place in my brain
where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.
It’s late but everything comes next.
Copyright 1994 Naomi Shihab Nye from Red Suitcase (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1994). Included in Vox Populi by permission of Naomi Shihab Nye.
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes. She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her numerous awards include a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize, the Betty Prize from Poets House for her service to poetry, and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. She served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2010–2015, and in May 2019 she was named the 2019–2021 Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. For more information about Naomi Shihab Nye, visit barclayagency.com/nye.
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21 comments on “Naomi Shihab Nye: Jerusalem”
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This entry was posted on November 26, 2023 by Vox Populi in Most Popular, Opinion Leaders, Poetry, Social Justice, spirituality, War and Peace and tagged activism, Gaza, Israeli occupation, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jerusalem, Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestine.Shortlink
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I love her clarity, always. ❤️
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Always
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Naomi stretches us all or I sincerely hope so in this outstanding,light filled poem!! Thank You!
joanne Snyder
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A light filled poem~ yes~!
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Shake my head in amazement and admiration.
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Yes, the poem does a lot in a short space.
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Thank you. Again. More.
Best, Kathy
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Yes. VP will publish more of Naomi’s poems, as well as many others.
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I count as one of my happiest moments taking a class at a quiet monastery with Naomi, and one of my saddest when I couldn’t go again because of my stroke. I love her poems and her beautiful calm understanding.
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Naomi is much beloved as a teacher and poet.
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“It’s late but everything comes next.”
Yes!
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Yes!
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“He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.”
What a metaphor, what wisdom and heart in all of Naomi’s poems!
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yes, wisdom and heart.
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A wise poem. I wish the world would heed her voice.
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I agree, Robbi. Like most people who are paying attention to world events, I often rise in anger and sink in despair. Naomi’s voice helps me find acceptance in loving/kindness.
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we need this.
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Yes. Yes we do.
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Thank you! I have never read a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that hasn’t spoken to me. Hating is easy. Naomi does the hard work and looks always for humanity. There is such tender kindness in her words, they are a balm.
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Naomi’s heart is large. She suffers with her people, but she sees the solution is not to make others suffer but to encourage all people to love more.
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Yes. That is evident in everything she writes. It’s writing from a place of grace and gently passing that grace on.
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