Fw: [Panhala] Kindness -- Naomi Shihab Nye

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- Joseph Riley

Panhala

Tuesday, May 13, 2003 3:06 AM

[Panhala] Kindness -- Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really isyou must lose things,feel the

future dissolve in a momentlike salt in a weakened broth.What you

held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,all this must

go so you knowhow desolate the landscape can bebetween the regions of

kindness.How you ride and ridethinking 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 someonewho 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

voicecatches the thread of all sorrowsand you see the size of the

cloth.Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,only kindness

that ties your shoesand sends you out into the day to mail letters and

purchase bread,only kindness that raises its headfrom the crowd of the

world to sayit is I you have been looking for,and then goes with you

every wherelike a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

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