PAIN
Poem for May 24, 2014
ARABIC
(Jordan, 1992)
The
man with laughing eyes stopped smiling
to
say, “Until you speak Arabic,
you
will not understand pain.”
Something to do with the back of the head,
Something to do with the back of the head,
an
Arab carries sorrow in the back of the head
that
only language cracks, thrum of stones
weeping,
grating hinge on an old metal gate.
“Once
you know,” he whispered, “you can enter the room
whenever
you need to. Music you heard from a distance,
the
slapped drum of a stranger’s wedding,
wells
up inside your skin, inside rain, a thousand
pulsing
tongues. You are changed.”
Outside,
the snow had finally stopped.
in
a land where snow rarely falls,
we
had our days grow white and still.
I
thought pain had no tongue. Or every tongue
at
once, supreme translator, sieve. I admit my
shame.
To live on the bank of Arabic, tugging
its
rich threads without understanding
how
to weave the rug … I have no gift.
The
sound, but not the sense.
I
kept looking over his shoulders for someone else
to
talk to, recalling my dying friend who only scrawled
I can’t write. What good would any grammar have been
to
her then? I touched his arm, held it hard,
which
sometimes you don’t do in the Middle East,
and
said, I’ll work on it, feeling sad
for
his good strict heart, but later in the slick street
hailed
a taxi by shouting Pain! And it
stopped
in
every language and opened its doors.
© Naomi Shihab Nye (1952 - )
From Red
Suitcase, © 2000