KINDNESS
Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian Poet
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
and the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the windows forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
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1 comment:
I loved this poem, Kristina. I'm reading your blog at my parents' house in Cleveland (b/c they have high speed and I don't!) and determined to live each moment fully tomorrow and kiss and hug my kids until they can't bear it anymore(even though Leo's going through a troublesome phase that will make this a challenge). I thought I'd share a fantastic poem with you that a colleague sent me when I went through the brain tumor stuff:
"Late Fragment"
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
--Raymond Carver
I hope to see you at the Y sometime soon...
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