'Two Countries' Analysis

Nardos Yosef

Anlicker

English 1102

18 November 2016

‘Two Countries’ Analysis

The assigned reading for this Friday was a poem called ‘Two Countries’ by Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian American poet from St. Louis, Missouri. The first thing I noticed about this poem was that it was not a rhyming type of poem-this two-stanza text was meant to tell a story. She starts it off by describing the way skin is touched by stating ‘Skin remembers how long the ears grow/When skin is not touched, a gray tunnel of/Singleness’ (Nye 1-2). This line is saying that as time goes by, when a body is not touched, you lose your sense of self. You begin to believe that you are alone. The next line that stood out to me was ‘Skin ate, walked/, Slept by itself.’ (Nye 6-7). She is describing the loneliness of being single and how you begin to be isolated after a period of time, and even describes how people see her-as just skin. ‘But skin felt/It was never seen, never known as/ A land on the map’ (Nye 8-10). To me, this line shows the feeling of not being seen or having anyone notice you at all while you are at you loneliest, or just having people not taking time to get to know who you are. She follows up by comparing skin to other things like ‘nose like a city, / hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque/and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.’ (Nye 10-12). I believe these comparisons to intimate things such as a city and a mosque kind of contribute to the idea of seeing people as just skin or something that is not real.

            The second stanza has a sort of mood change by starting off with ‘Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.’ (Nye 13). This is a definite change of gears from the melancholy, dejected tone that the first stanza was full of by stating that there was hope indeed. Nye continues with ‘Love means you breath in two countries. / And skin remembers—silk, spiny grass, deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.’ (Nye 15-17). These lines are saying that when you feel love, it gives you a sense of relief. It leaves a memory on your skin. ‘Even now, when skin is not alone, / it remembers being alone and thanks something larger/ that there are travelers, that people go places/larger than themselves.’ (Nye 18-21). These last few lines have a sense of peacefulness. She states that even when someone is not alone they remember the feeling of loneliness on their skin. She is grateful for the people that can get past the isolation and knows her for who she truly is. 

            I really enjoyed this poem. I believe Naomi Shibab Nye had more than a few different meanings for this poem, but what I got out of it was that she is more than just skin. These days, people do not really take the time to know others and understand others. It is a hopeful piece that understands that even though she is a complex person, there are still possibilities and people that she has not encountered yet that may one day understand her for who she really is.