Page 65 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015
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Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION
Naomi Shihab Nye
My Grandmother Said
They just don’t know our stories,
(after being tear gassed by Israeli soldiers,
she held the cut onion, the hankie to her face) -
If they knew our stories, they would behave a different way.
They never sat around my small fire cracking almonds.
They don’t know I have a great sense of humor.
I never showed them what I keep inside my green trunk,
the tiny treasures I have left, since they took my house...
... if they saw them they might laugh,
the broken plate, the strip of cloth.
It might be good for them to laugh,
since they never smiled at us yet,
not even once. I don’t know where they came from
but I come from here, it was always my field,
I don’t care who owns it, it’s mine.
If you speak to the trees, they’ll speak back
not only with olives but a soft mixing of leaves
after the soldiers return to the city, or wherever else they go,
and the trees with their deep hearts apologize for all meanness,
I mean this, a rustling...
They just do not know.
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