Voices in the Air

by Naomi Shihab Nye

  his vocabulary, coming to a new world,

  for safety and rescue. Please Madame, my name is Abdul,

  this is my family, my brother, my sister, I am happy

  to know you.

  Invitation to the NSA

  Feel free to scrutinize my messages. Welcome. Have fun fanning through my private thoughts on drones, the Israeli Army chopping down olive trees, endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, horrific from the get-go, and we told you so, but no one listened because there was a lot of money and oomph in it, so feel free to listen now. Bombs have no mothers. That is an insult to mothers. See what I think about Bashar-al-Assad vs. the children of Syria, pass it on, please, or weapons in general, the George W. Bush library in Dallas which I refused to drive my mother past. I like the sense of you looking over our shoulders, lifting up the skirts of our pages, peering under my fury at how you forget Palestine again and again, forget the humble people there, never calling them the victimized innocents as you call others. You forget your promises, forget religion, Thou Shalt Not Kill, and yet you kill, in so many ways, so what do we care? You might as well see what we say.

  Double Peace

  For Yehuda Amichai

  “If I try to be like him, who will be like me?”—Yiddish proverb

  Not for him and his people alone

  but for all who loved that rocky land

  Everybodyeverybodysing it!

  No chosen and unchosen but everybody chosen

  Sing it!

  All families living under tiled rooftops

  Or flat roofs with strung clotheslines

  T-shirtsbedsheetsflags of surrender

  I show you my clothI live the way you live

  All the cousinssecond cousins

  extra cousinsunknown cousins

  No choiceeveryone a cousin

  peace better than hurtful moves

  betterbettersing it!

  Not rain that fell on a few houses only

  Not sun that shone on a few favored yards

  Not air in small containers only for some lungs

  Double peace multiplied

  Outsideinsideevery ancient space

  every sleek new room with tall windows

  Peace for sheep and goats grazing in meadows

  (They already have it)

  Peace for buckets waiting on doorsteps

  Peace in brown eggs lined on counters waiting to be

  cracked

  Peace in skillets and spatulas

  We met at the cornerwent to his home for

  breakfast

  He said, I would never have taken your father’s

  home!

  I could never have lived in a stolen Arab home!

  The great voice of the Jewish people said this to

  my face

  our conversation

  where streets converged

  Break the Worry Cocoon

  “Take them, use them, I beg you to travel.”

  —Samih al-Qasim, from “Travel Tickets”

  To live with what we are given—

  graciously, as if our windows open wide as our neighbors’, as if there weren’t insult at every turn.

  How did you do that?

  “. . . if social justice will be victorious in all the world . . . I don’t care who will remember me or my poems.”

  You sprang from the earth same way everyone does,

  from the soil of your parents, the small bed and hopeful song.

  Were pressed along through a century

  that didn’t honor your people,

  who washed their faces anyway,

  stitched the dresses, buttoned shirts.

  “. . . travel tickets . . . one to peace . . .

  one to the fields and the rain, and one to the

  conscience of humankind . . .”

  How did you survive so much hurt and remain gracious,

  finding words to mark the shapes

  of grief, how did you believe,

  then and forever, breaking out

  of the endless worry cocoon,

  something better might come your people’s way?

  The Tent

  When did hordes of sentences start

  beginning with So—

  as if everything were always pending,

  leaning on what came before.

  What can you expect?

  Loneliness everywhere, entertained or kept in storage.

  So you felt anxious to be alone.

  Easier to hear, explore a city, room,

  mound of hours, no one walking beside you.

  Talking to self endlessly, but mostly listening.

  This would not be strange.

  It would be the tent you slept in.

  Waking calmly inside whatever

  you had to do would be freedom.

  It would be your country.

  The men in front of me had whole acres

  in their eyes. I could feel them cross, recross each day.

  Memory, stitched. History, soothed.

  What we do or might prefer to do. Have done.

  How we got here. Telling ourselves a story

  till it’s compact enough to bear.

  Passing the walls, wearing the sky,

  the slight bow and rising of trees.

  Everything ceaselessly holding us close.

  So we are accompanied.

  Never cast out without a line of language

  to reel us back.

  That is what happened, how I got here.

  So maybe. One way anyway.

  A story was sewn, seed sown,

  this was what patriotism meant to me—

  to be at home inside my own head long enough

  to accept its infinite freedom

  and move forward anywhere, to mysteries coming.

  Even at night in a desert, temperatures plummet,

  billowing tent flaps murmur to one another.

  Please Sit Down

  For Vera B. Williams

  Your mama will have a chair

  Everyone will have a chair

  There are enough chairs

  In the dreams we share

  desks with smooth wooden tops

  Name cards in calligraphy

  cubbyholes under seats

  What else might people be given?

  When everyone sits calmly in chairs

  Numbers march across pages

  Letters line up friendly-fashion

  Hopefully we might like those letters enough

  to shape them into stories

  Where have you been before here?

  Who did you see?

  A woman of sturdy conviction

  clear, clear focus

  making history with her hands

  A garden, a muffin, a world?

  Greedy men say “More!” to war

  Sitting together telling stories

  could change that but who will take the time?

  Missiles faster

  All our lives to speak of simple things

  turns out to be

  most complicated

  For the Birds

  “Why not?”—Dorothy Stafford’s late-life motto

  Why aren’t you filling your feeders these days,

  my mother asks—the birds are disappointed,

  they keep landing on the feeder and flying away

  looking sad. And I thought about our lives,

  days crammed full of doings—so many messages,

  do they feed us or make us fretful?

  Maybe the birds are messages

  too. But saying what? We watch them landing,

  ruffling succulent soft brown layered wings,

  wearing snazzy yellow beaks,

  and I haul out the sack of seeds.

  Bowing Candles

  For John O’Donohue

  How lonely your house feels, like the abandoned

  house of an ancient shepherd, in the far Connemara

  meadows.

>   Though I pictured it white, the outer walls are

  muddy brown.

  We peer through windows.

  Candles on long wooden table

  bend over at their waists,

  wax softening in sun

  bowing to your absence.

  Still in shock, as are we. How could your voice be so

  alive—then gone?

  Nothing boxed or put away—you left unexpectedly.

  I feel shy—never having met you but

  remembering your graceful handwriting across years of letters—

  and what did we say?

  Yes of course, take it away, my poem is your poem,

  all poems belong to anyone who loves them.

  You carried light to tables—long tables

  around the world like this wooden one

  still waiting here—everyone remembers you—

  serving light on plates with place mats.

  You wrote about beauty, joy, belonging.

  Quickly, someone must move into your house.

  Black Car

  For Van Morrison

  Everyone still resonating, sliding

  saxophone, searing plume of joy that lit the hall,

  coating gilt ceiling, causing us all

  to rise, raise our hands.

  What it is to carry a voice like that.

  From side stage door to back seat of car.

  Crowd still hovering cheers again,

  engine zooms into night.

  Thank you. Thank you. Pressing the walk button

  we fly.

  MORE WORLDS

  “Many Indians say they live in two worlds, but they actually have to live in more than two worlds. If you live in one world you are pretty much stuck in one place. Right now, I am living in the cab-driving world, the sober world, the Indian world, the art world. The more worlds you live in, the better it is.”

  —FRANK BIG BEAR JR., ARTIST

  Mountains

  Jesse never felt smarter than at age six

  the only first grader in a fifth-grade poetry workshop—

  when they wrote about their neighborhood

  his poem by far the best in the room

  and he the first volunteer to stand and read it.

  The big kids clapped for him and cheered.

  He remembered this at twenty-one

  when we crossed paths on Commerce Street.

  Hey, hey! Could I ever feel like that again?

  It was my Best Day!

  Now working two jobstwo kids to support

  Yes I think so

  Do you read to your kids?

  Do you have a library card?

  Do you use it?

  NoNoNo

  Start there, Jesse! You knew the truth

  when you were sixthat your street was magical

  and full of mountains

  though it was utterly flat.

  You wrote about the rooster’s songs

  and the dogs’ barkingful wonder.

  You wrote Who do you think I amamam?

  And knew instinctively it was more powerful to say

  “am”

  three times than one—

  You are still that person.

  Oh, Say Can You See

  I’d like to take Donald Trump to Palestine,

  set him free in the streets of Ramallah or Nablus

  amidst all the winners who never gave up in sixty-nine years.

  They’d like to make their country great again too,

  if only their hands weren’t tied by the weapons

  our country donates. Let’s talk about who belongs where,

  how an immigrant to Israel is treated better than someone

  who tended a tree for a hundred years. Who lies?

  Let’s talk about lies. Give it a shout! They built a wall

  so ugly, kids must dream of flying over,

  or burrowing under, and it didn’t solve anything.

  I’d wrap a keffiyeh around his head,

  tuck some warm falafels into his pockets,

  let him wander alleyways and streets,

  rubble and hope mixing together,

  nothing oversized, no tall towers,

  just beautiful life, mint flourishing in a tin can,

  schoolgirl in a fresh dress with a ruffle, mom and dad

  staring from the windows—Can you see us?

  Can you see any of us at all?

  Anti-Inaugural

  I pledge allegiance

  To respect

  For every one

  Of you

  Talking truth

  is hard

  Staying silent

  should be harder

  My voting preference?

  Every person

  In this city

  Silence waits

  For truth

  To break it

  You be my president,

  I’ll be yours

  We have never

  paid

  Enough attention

  yet

  Some days

  we are

  the fallen flower

  Abundance!

  Nature doesn’t shout.

  Be brave

  Little things

  Still matter most

  I Vote for You

  For Connor James Nye

  You smile at everyone. When lifted, toted,

  you hold tightly to shoulder or sleeve.

  Gazing curiously, each room, face,

  Irish sheep, stuffed puppy.

  Dwelling in a current of care,

  you know nothing of cruelties people do

  to one another.

  You did not see the intricate avenues of Aleppo—

  tiled ceilings, arching rooms.

  The villages of Palestine

  could still be neatly terraced in your brain.

  When you smile, we might all be

  wishing each other well.

  When you startle at a loud sound,

  await the power of softness

  to settle you down. There is no other power

  in your world.

  Hunger, interest, kicking, joy—carry us there.

  If your eyes fall heavily closed,

  sweet rescue in the dozing.

  What we might remember if we tried much harder.

  In your dream no one is a refugee.

  Everyone has clean sheets.

  Belfast

  (For Frankee & Paul)

  I’m attached to everything

  things that aren’t mine

  places that aren’t mine

  (nothing is mine)

  fingers feeling for a switch in the dark

  knowing how a knob turns or sticks

  after only two days

  click of the lock

  attached to swervessurprisenew corners

  riding an elevator to the seventh floor of the old

  linen mill

  meeting artists

  simply by knocking on their doors

  Tell again—what was all that violence for?

  Old BelfastI’m attached to your red brick

  peaks & pitchescompact neighborhoods

  green slopes behind (they aren’t mine)

  haunting yellow cranes at the Titanic shipyard

  gray slate stones on the beach

  (we could see Scotlandalso not mine

  but now I’m so attached to everything

  I almost doubled in size)

  attached to Stranmillis Roadswans

  swiftsrivers

  the glorious face of Queen’s University

  we could start over

  everything over

  new worldnew mapnew life

  and the baked potato with cheese and red beans

  I kept hearing about

  there is morethere is morethere is more

  Summer

  Up late watching TV commercials while waiting for the last quarter of the basketball finals game—it�
��s clear what someone must think Americans want: everything to blow up. Catastrophic explosions, chaos, car chases, mobs of desperate people running from zombies, massive flying robot creatures with their weapons pointed directly at us. It is NOW SUMMER AND WE HAVE MADE THIS MOVIE FOR YOU. OPENING SOON. Even the national capitol features giant flames spilling out of its dome. These commercials will whet the appetites of fellow Americans who, only a few decades ago, were happy with lightning bugs and lemonade. What happened to us?

  A Lonely Cup of Coffee

  Far preferable

  to a sociable cup

  which tastes more

  of talk

  the lonely cup

  redolent

  rich

  ripe

  round

  blesses

  the quiet mouth

  Reading Obituaries on the Day

  of the Giant Moon

  Is it possible to fall in love posthumously with someone’s stunningly mismatched eyebrows

  and straight-on gaze?

  Kazue’s summary describes her as “a fiery woman even at seventy-three.”

  I want to follow her blazing through the streets of

  Hokkaido

  where she was born and grew up,

  then to Texas, where her “beloved husband” died

  and “without skipping a beat”

  she entered the “food industry.” What does this mean? Where did she cook?

  How many beats do we skip every day?

  “In lieu of flowers,” writes one of her sons,

  “take your mother to dinner or enjoy a good meal

  like Kazue would have wanted you to.”

  Yesterday we buried fiery Hilda, eighty-six, who made everyone feel loved,

  whose red poppies light up City Street each spring.

  Did she call the whole world darling? No, just me,

  just me.

  But at her graveside, everyone else knew her better

  than I did.

  The neighborhood feels tipped.

  Our house may slide into the river

  without Hilda here, cozy in her tall rooms,

  holding things back.

  To Jamyla Bolden of Ferguson, Missouri

  Fifty years before you did your homework