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Naomi Shihab Nye's "Kindness" Poem

To truly understand kindness, one must first experience loss and sorrow so profound that the future seems dissolved and the landscape feels desolate. By seeing how suffering can apply to anyone, including the dead man by the side of the road, and waking up with sorrow, speaking to it, and understanding the scope of all sorrow, one learns that in the end only kindness makes sense. Kindness is what guides our daily tasks and accompanies us like a companion.

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1K views2 pages

Naomi Shihab Nye's "Kindness" Poem

To truly understand kindness, one must first experience loss and sorrow so profound that the future seems dissolved and the landscape feels desolate. By seeing how suffering can apply to anyone, including the dead man by the side of the road, and waking up with sorrow, speaking to it, and understanding the scope of all sorrow, one learns that in the end only kindness makes sense. Kindness is what guides our daily tasks and accompanies us like a companion.

Uploaded by

kosta22
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
  • Kindness

Kindness

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.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness

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.

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt i
Kindness Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing, Yo

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