Ποίηση

Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit

Naomi Shihab Nye

Once they started invading us.

Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,

pushing us into tiny places.

It wasn't a bargain or deal or even a real war.

To this day they pretend it was.

But it was something else.

We were sorry what happened to them but

we had nothing to do with it.

You don't think what a little plot of land means

till someone takes it and you can't go back.

Your feet still want to walk there.

Now you are drifting worse

than homeless dust, very lost feeling.

I cried even to think of our hallway,

cool stone passage inside the door.

Nothing would fit for years.

They came with guns, uniforms, declarations.

Life magazine said,

'It was surprising to find some Arabs still in their houses.'

Surprising? Where else would we be?

Up on the hillsides?

Conversing with mint and sheep, digging in dirt?

Why was someone else's need for a home

greater than our own need for our own homes

we were already living in? No one has ever been able

to explain this sufficiently. But they find

a lot of other things to talk about.

Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American resident of Texas, was born in St. Louis and lived in Jerusalem in her youth.