A friend sent me the
following poem, “Kindness,” and suggested it could be read as a meditation on compassion. See if this resonates for you. I'm struck by the poet’s notion that
through the deepest sorrow, we find the deepest compassion. I have had inklings
of that in a new sense of compassion I feel for others since Noah’s death, especially for young people who are struggling or parents who are desperately trying to help their kids or others in mourning. Suddenly, my radar is flashing; these people are larger than life, all around me, and I want to be present for them. Still many miles, though, from feeling compassion for Noah or for myself . . .
Kindness by Naomi
Shihab Nye
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 every where
like a
shadow or a friend.
~by Naomi Shihab Nye
in Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems
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