Love Means We Breathe in Two Countries

Their Guns are bigger than us—
Their Tanks bigger than shrines—
To enjoy fireworks, you would have 
Had to have lived a Different kind of life.

Clothes on a line say: you’ll 
Live long enough to Wear me.
What does Infinity look like? Not like a wall—
Not like soldiers with guns—not like a ruined house 
Bombed out of being—not like concrete wreckage 
Of a School’s good hope, a Clinic’s best dream—
What do Palestinians Want? 
Confidence in a Threshold.

We refuse to forget our Laughter,
Even if the world forgets we have it.
We’re not headed toward hope’s end: 
We’re awash in Hope’s Beginnings …

Politics is simply the way Human 
Beings treat one another on Earth.
The Wind flutters the hem of her dress 
And says there’s no border in the Sky!

Lines from Naomi Shihab Nye