“Jerusalem” is in some senses not an antiwar poem: there is no particular war it is opposing, being set rather in the context of the intractable conflict in Israel-Palestine. Opposition to war in the strict sense is stated only by a character in the poem: the child who writes, “I don’t like wars, they end up with monuments.”
“Jerusalem” is, though, a peace poem, imagining reconciliation: “I’m interested in people getting over it.” It is filled with images of almost fantastic peace and joy—the child’s “bird with wings / wide enough to cover two roofs at once,” for example. It is an indirect exploration of the place in the poet’s brain “where hate won’t grow.”
Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952) was born in St. Louis, then moved to the West Bank with her family (her father was Palestinian), spent considerable time there with her Palestinian grandmother, and moved back to the United States a year later, settling in San Antonio. She began writing poems at the age of seven, and now writes poems and children’s stories (she won the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature). She calls herself “the wandering poet,” traveling often and around the world to direct workshops in writing.
“Let’s be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let’s fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.”
—TOMMY OLOFSSON, Sweden
I’m not interested in
who suffered the most.
I’m interested in
people getting over it.
Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.
Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
“I am native now.”
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child’s poem says,
“I don’t like wars,
they end up with monuments.”
He’s painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.
Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it’s ridiculous.
There’s a place in my brain
where hate won’t grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.
It’s late but everything comes next.