one small hand

Is it perhaps a little early in the month to be throwing down Naomi Shihab Nye? Maybe. On the other hand, I sure am feeling some type of way about the world, these days, and she's an incredible poet for those feelings—including that time I accidentally went viral on tumblr with Gate A-4. So here's another Nye poem that fucks me up.

        We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
                                                                                —Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Making a Fist" from Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab American Poetry (University of Utah Press, 1988).

so much of any year is flammable

Today is April 1, which on general principle is a day I try to stay off the internet, because people are really terrible about April Fool's Day. However, today is also the first day of National Poetry Month in the U.S., a holiday I have been celebrating for twelve years. This is the thirteenth year! My National Poetry Month posts are getting Bat Mitzvahed this year! 

I'm still taking requests and suggestions, although I've also planned out a lot of the month—poetry month is always a complicated mix of planned and spontaneous, and this year is no different. If you're new to my poetry month posts, I try to post a poem a day for the month of April (with varying degrees of success), and I try not to repeat poems I have posted before, but I never promise not to break my own rules. 

Let's start, this year, with Naomi Shihab Nye: 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

—Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), "Burning the Old Year," from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland: Far Corner Books, 1995).

their prayers were weathered rib bones

Happy Sunday, friends. ♥

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards, 
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow 
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long 
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese, 
and were happy in spite of the pain, 
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen 
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand. 
When they arrived at Mecca 
they would circle the holy places, 
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily, 
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses, 
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America. 
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
           Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones. 
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool, 
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats, 
and was famous for his laugh.

—Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), "Different Ways to Pray" from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). I fucking love Naomi Shihab Nye.

what doesn't change

Yesterday night, on the subway home from a very lovely evening of friends and birthday celebrations, I asked N. what poem I should post. She said, "a poem about a train," and I laughed and then went home and posted Neruda. But I kept thinking about train poems.

Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change  
is train tracks. She's sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery  
by the side, but not the tracks.
I've watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.

Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train  
is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.  
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.  
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn't change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.  
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound  
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Trying to Name What Doesn't Change" from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland: Far Corner Books, 1995). As always, I love her.

always stay rooted to somewhere

Variations on a theme: wintercreek posted this poem yesterday, and I almost posted this poem yesterday. I really love this poem, and I have never posted it, and it is really wonderful, so here you are:

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

—Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), "Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal."

like a shadow or a friend

Things are a little rough again, here in the Houses of Slightly Regressed Healing -- I called us the Houses of Pelennor Fields a week or two ago, and I think that may still hold true. I would really like it, if I could come out of this seemingly endless tunnel into a place where every single day is not a trial of my resilience. On the other hand, apparently my resilience is kind of kick ass; and through all of this, I continue to have extraordinary friends, and exceptional family, and really excellent poetry.

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,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window 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 every where
like a shadow or a friend.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness," from Different Ways to Pray, 1980 (reprinted in The Words Under the Words, 1995).

our pockets full of stones

For Maggie, a bit, although I would have posted it regardless. Naomi Shihab Nye is one of those gorgeous living poets I always forget about -- until suddenly I find myself reading her poetry and thinking oh, yes.

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."

~Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), "The Words Under the Words", from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, 1995.