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| Naomi Shihab Nye |
A little over a year ago, I posted this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye after hearing that she had been chosen to deliver the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture in 2018. Then I found out the location at which she would speak: Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. - my new home town!
Well, two weeks ago she delivered her talk to an enthusiastic crowd, and I attended with my good friend and fellow writer, Laura Kvasnosky.We both scribbled notes as she talked about the joys of writing poetry for children. Her lecture was most notable for its anecdotes about school visits and interactions with kids - I'm hoping Laura will write about it this week on our shared blog, Books Around the Table, so I won't go into specifics here. But I do want to repost this poem, my favorite of Nye's, titled "Two Countries.".As an Arab-American, Nye spoke passionately at WWU about her own two countries - Palestine and the United States - and about the need to be open-armed and generous-spirited about immigrants during this difficult period in America's history when intolerance and xenophobia are rearing their ugly heads. Here is the poem I love, and I love it not only for its message (that we live in our own "skin," our bodies, but the world is larger, there are other travelers) but for its technical precision - the abundant internal rhymes and near rhymes (step/swept/slept, known/nose/dome, rope/hope/road, own/alone) which make it both song and poem.
TWO COUNTRIES by Naomi Shihab Nye
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers—silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by the marvelous Jama Kim Rattigan over at her blog, Jama's Alphabet Soup. Head over there now to see what other people have posted. And you might enjoy this interview of Nye at the On Being Project site.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers—silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
The Poetry Friday round-up is being hosted today by the marvelous Jama Kim Rattigan over at her blog, Jama's Alphabet Soup. Head over there now to see what other people have posted. And you might enjoy this interview of Nye at the On Being Project site.
