Monday Quote
“To live without roads seemed one way not to get lost.”
- Naomi Shihab Nye
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Kate Morgan Reade: I had to look this up. The line is haunting in a deeply spiritual way, which Naomi Shihabe Nye means, but also very earthy and real.
Here, from what I can find, is the whole poem:
https://voetica.com/poem/13770
Jerusalem
Two girls danced, red flames winding.
I offered my shoes to the gypsies,
threw back my head, and yelled.
All day their hillocks of cheese
had been drying on a goat hide
stretched in the sun.
So it was true—they came in the night,
they set their dark tents flapping.
Gypsies see right through you,
I’d heard a man say in town.
And did they like what they saw?
To live without roads seemed one way
not to get lost. To make maps
of stone and grass, to rub stars together
and find a spark.
I gave American shoes, sandals from Greece.
They held each one curiously, shy to put them on.
Later the shoes disappeared into the tent
and I walked home with their drums in my belly.
Maybe they would use them as vases,
drawers. At least there were choices,
not like a sword, which did only one thing,
or a house, which sat and sat in the desert
after the goats and music had blown away.
Kate Morgan Reade: Thank you for stimulating me to look up this wondrous work, which I bookmark to advert to again.