Thursday, September 21, 2006

I Never Realized They Had Aspirations Like Ours

(An Israeli, about the Palestinians)

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Cranes which land in a Texas river
have flown for thousands of miles.
Dipping long beaks into green water,
they pretend not to notice us.
Graceful necks,
a curved, close world.
Still, a feather fluffs
or a wing stays wide
if we pass.

What else by the long stroke of hope?
Some have said it fifty years.
By now the sorrowing people
make secret refuge in the sky.
If the ground satisfied their dreams,
the sky would miss them.

Naomi Shihab Nye received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for 2005

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