Voices and Vessels:
A Confluence of Ideas and Passion
in Fine Press Books and Broadsides
KINDNESS
by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Printed on Somrset Velvet Newsprint paper employing a structure based on the traditional palm leaf book of Southeast Asia. The seven panels fold out to slowly reveal the poem. Printed in an edition of 110 numbered and signed copies. Folded: 3.5 x 11 inches. Unfolded: 24.5 x 11 inches. Price: $125
To inquire about purchasing this work,
please contact Laura at 23 Sandy.
KINDNESS
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
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,
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 gaze at 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.