Vox Populi
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Naomi Shihab Nye: The Words Under the Words
–– for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem
My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,
the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.
When I was sick they followed me,
I woke from the long fever to find them
covering my head like cool prayers.
My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America. More often, tourists,
who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.
She knows how often mail arrives,
how rarely there is a letter.
When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,
listening to it read again and again
in the dim evening light.
My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.
Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.
She knows the spaces we travel through,
the messages we cannot send—our voices are short
and would get lost on the journey.
Farewell to the husband’s coat,
the ones she has loved and nourished,
who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.
They will plant themselves. We will all die.
My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.
When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,
when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,
He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.
“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—
otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,
difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”
~~~~
Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author. From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)
Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, and she began composing her first poetry at the age of six. In total, she has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry. Her works include poetry, young-adult fiction, picture books, and novels. Nye received the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in honor of her entire body of work as a writer, and in 2019 the Poetry Foundation designated her the Young People’s Poet Laureate for the 2019–21 term.
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Naomi has long been an inspiration–thank you for reminding me of this gorgeous and moving poem.
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Yes, Naomi has been an inspiration to many of us.
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“A world with a lot of rough edges, / difficult to get through.” We all need grandmother wisdom now, more than ever. Thank you Naomi and Michael for posting this poem I did not know.
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Thanks, Jan. I love this poem.
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Oh to be back in Tassajara again, to hear her words, to write in the high ceilings hall, to sit in the zendo, to be alive in the valley where evil could not find us.
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Lovely, Barbara. Thank you…
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I’ll join Margo in remembering well when I read this poignant & tender poem so many years ago, and how, today, it is even more deeply moving. Thank you Naomi & Michael.
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Thank YOU, Laure-Anne. I’ve written elsewhere that you and Naomi are two of the best poets in America, and you are also two of the kindest people I’ve ever known.
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Time to pull out her books again. She is a caring human being and magnificent poet. Thank you for your choices of poems in a time poetry is a comforting salve, a warning, a call to pay attention.
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Thanks, Barbara. Naomi has long been my fave….
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Shihab Nye’s poem for her grandmother belongs with all of us.
Last night, for me, a new grief arrived to be borne. The wisdom of “The Words Under the Words” can help with the healing, and with rejuvenation, as grandmothers often do.
Her grandmother, bless her heart, knows the spaces we travel through.
And she also knows the species we travel with, offering a guide to human journey. Thanks to her, with her sensual awareness of life, and her insights, well told.
How well Sitti Khadra is honored by this poem: deeply, lovely.
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Thanks, Jim. I’m sorry to hear about your new grief arriving to be borne. You can share the specifics with me or us if you want to. If not, please know you have lots of friends and admirers, including me.
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I second Michael, Jim…
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I’ll reply to my grief statement in response to Naomi’s powerful poem.
Not all grief involves the death of loved ones. Sometimes it’s a more communal grief, but can be just as devastating to the psyche in many ways.
Yesterday, the White House released the following executive order: I’ll post the order Here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy
and the response of the American Library Association Here: https://www.ala.org/news/2025/03/ala-statement-white-house-assault-institute-museum-and-library-services
I was a member of the American Library Association for decades, and an on again, off again officer of the Minnesota Library Association.
During the first part of my career, from 1977-1986 my library position involved networking with and among rural libraries in Southern Minnesota. It was my job to demonstrate the synergy of networking: how working together provided better human service to rural residents. For this we were dependent on federal block grants given to each state to promote networking. As one example, I chaired a committee that set up the first resource sharing between public, academic, and school libraries in the US (we thought the first to include all types). Those annual grants from the Federal Govt. made life better for rural users, providing each tiny library access to materials and databases beyond their budgets to purchase. Now the White House orders the end of such. Its motives go beyond what can be written here.
I heard of this order last night, but it wasn’t till this morning that I remembered the concrete work we did, and the lobbying of local government to buy in. But I also remembered the library pioneers who devoted their lives to the citizens of those small towns and rural counties, supplying everything from tractor repair manuals to traveling storytellers. And when I think now of those people I once worked with, I can’t help but cry for them and their memories today. To how they brought a better life to many. And a new generation of librarians still does.
But institutional grief is not the same as personal human or pet grief. Institutions, like public library networks (or democracy and community building) may be reduced to ashes, but like the Phoenix, can rise again, either quickly or after long eons. But they will.
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And at some point, institutional grief devastates what connects us to ourselves.
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exactly, Barb.
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Libraries and museums have given me so much all my life. Trump is attacking the soul of America.
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Oh…grandmothers. The things they know; how they traveled. And how magical it was that bread was baked in a wood-burning stove, filling the entire house with such uplifting aroma. Nothing like it. Nothing like a grandma.
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Naomi has written a lot of poems about her Palestinian grandmother. She becomes a fount of wisdom and the center of identity.
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I read this poem and the book it graced , 30 years ago. Rereading it, it shines brighter still with tears and poignancy, and the limpid understanding that this poet has been offering and teaching her culture and her humanity all these years…and still the words under the words catch the reading heart as though the first time. .
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Beautifully said, Margo. Thank you.
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Amen Margo. And thanks Michael for re-acquainting us all with this poignant and universal poem by dear Naomi whose words we carry with us on the hardest parts of our own journies.
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Thank you, Kathleen.
M
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I read this poem and the book it graced , 30 years ago. Rereading it, it shines brighter still with tears and poignancy, and the limpid understanding that this poet has been offering and teaching her culture and her humanity all these years…and still the words under the words catch the reading heart as though the first time. .
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