Kindness

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 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.