By Naomi Shihab Nye
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 everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
4 thoughts on “Kindness”
So beautiful, simple, yet profound.
“You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
That is exactly it… Thank you for sharing this Laura.
As you know, one of my very favorite poems! I often think of the line:
“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,”
as some days it seems so challenging to leave the house and encounter the world.
Of course, many of us don’t “mail letters” much anymore and many of us don’t eat “bread” anymore either (unless it’s gluten free, of course) and lots of us have velcro shoes rather than shoelaces….but I digress. 🙂
Lovely visuals though. Naomi is a treasure!
Thanks for posting this.
B.
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.”
IT is then that kindness makes you weep.
Thanks, Billie, for introducing me to her work. This poem resonated quite strongly for me.