Jerusalem

“Jerusalem” first appeared in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry collection Red Suitcase (1994, BOA Editions). Nye is a well-known American poet who is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee father and an American-born mother. The poem explores conflict in the titular city of Jerusalem where her father was born and where he fled because of the conflict between Palestinians and Jews after the creation of the State of Israel. Nye lived there as a child for a full year when her family went to live with her grandmother on the West Bank. The poem calls for a healing between the warring factions, stating that the speaker is not interested in who has suffered the most, but rather in people “getting over it” (Line 4). Like many of Nye’s poems, she embraces a call for unity.

Poet Biography

Born on March 12, 1952, Naomi Shihab Nye lived in St. Louis, Missouri until she was 14. Her father was a refugee from Palestine, and her mother was a Montessori school teacher of Swiss-German descent.

Hearing the American poet Carl Sandburg read on television one day was an experience that she says has stuck with her all her life. She started writing poetry at six years of age.

Shihab Nye’s family spent her 14th year in the West Bank visiting and caring for her grandmother, who became an important influence for her. She wrote Habibi, a children’s book, which takes place in this setting.

The family resettled in San Antonio, Texas in 1967, just before the start of the Six-Day War. In high-school Shihab Nye served as editor of the school’s literary magazine.

After earning a bachelor’s in English and world-religions from Trinity University, Shihab Nye taught at the Texas Commission on the Arts. She continues to work mainly with children, but now also instructs creative writing at Texas State University. Some of Shihab Nye’s influences are W. S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton, Kate Barnes, Jane Mayhell, and William Stafford, with whom she studied poetry. She is also a songwriter, novelist, essayist, editor of various anthologies, and a spokesperson for peace. Her books include 13 collections of adult poetry, seven books of children’s poetry, and three novels.

Poem Text

Shihab Nye, Naomi. “Jerusalem.” 1994. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem opens with a quote from a love poem by Tommy Olofsson, in which the Swedish poet implores his enemies to join him and “be the same wound.”

Shihab Nye’s poem title and opening quote give the reader some necessary context. This poem is about Jerusalem, which has seen violence and fighting for centuries. In the first stanza, the speaker declares her opinion on the matter:

I’m not interested in

who suffered the most.

I’m interested in

people getting over it (Lines 1-4).

She announces that she is not going to take sides in this poem, or that if she takes sides, she is with the peacemakers, whoever they may be, whatever nationality they may belong to.

In the next stanza the speaker tells a seemingly unrelated anecdote about her father. “Once when my father was a boy / a stone hit him on the head. / Hair would never grow there” (Lines 5-7). This is a personal story about being the victim of violence, mirroring the political acts of violence in the region. The speaker calls the bald spot a “riddle” (Line 9). When she says, “the boy who has fallen / stands up” (Lines 9-10), she is speaking of her father. The speaker creates the impression the boy got over it the way she wants people fighting in the Middle East to get over it, saying, “The pears are not crying” (Line 12). The boy has the love of his mother, nature, and home to help him feel safe and heal in spite of his recent hurt. In the next lines, the speaker reveals that it was the boy’s “friend who threw the stone” (Line 13) because he was “aiming at a bird.” (Line 14). As a result of this mistake, her “father starts growing wings” (Line 15). This indicates that the father, rather than becoming angry, starts to mimic the bird in peril.

In the third stanza, the speaker leaps to a statement—“Each carries a tender spot: / something our lives forgot to give us” (Lines 16-17). This makes the poem more universal. The speaker is teaching a lesson to the reader that everyone has “a tender spot” (Line 16) where they experience lack or pain. The next lines give examples of how some people compensate for these aches. “A man builds a house” (Line 18), and “[a] woman speaks to a tree in place / of her son” (Lines 20-21). This makes the man feel “native” (Line 19) and the woman help the tree bring forth “olives” (Line 20). These images refer to the boy and his mother in the previous stanza. The boy has to leave home, and his mother has to compensate for the distance of her son.

Next the speaker leaps to a child writing a poem. “I don’t like wars” (Line 23), he says, so the child paints “a bird with wings / wide enough to cover two roofs at once” (Lines 25-26). This bird echoes the bird from the previous stanzas. The fact that it covers two roofs at once is a metaphor suggesting that the bird can protect everyone, including two sets of people on different sides of a struggle.

The next stanza poses a stark contrast to the image of the bird covering both houses. The speaker asks, “[w]hy are we so monumentally slow?” (Line 27). She is referring to all humankind and its propensity for war. The image of “[s]oldiers stalk[ing] a pharmacy: / big guns, little pills” (Lines 28-29), shows the unnecessary harshness of war. There is no reason why anyone would need to send soldiers to “stalk” (Line 28) little pills or a pharmacy, the purpose of which is to help people heal. It is “ridiculous” (Line 31), the speaker affirms.

The second to last stanza calls back to the anecdote of Stanza 2. She declares: “There’s a place in my brain / where hate won’t grow” (Line 32-33). This parallels the place in her father’s head where hair will not grow. It is her declaration that she won’t let war and violence make her angry or make her hate other people. She says this too is a “riddle: wind, and seeds” (Line 34). The wind and seeds may be metaphors for something that is the opposite of hate; “wind” (Line 34) moves things away from their stuckness, and “seeds” (Line 34) grow new things. This opens the poem up to something mysterious the speaker may not fully understand. “Something pokes us as we sleep” (Line 35) she writes, but she does not specify what it is or why it is poking her.

The last line, “It’s late but everything comes next” (Line 36), is ambiguous. The “everything” (Line 36) can be positive changes or negative changes, but it turns towards hope. The fact that “everything comes next” (Line 36) suggests that there is a future and that much will happen in this future. Even though “it’s late” (Line 36), nothing is over. That on its own is a declaration of hope.