Naomi Shihab Nye → Ναόμι Σίχαμπ Νάι

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Naomi Shihab Nye (Arabic: نعومي شهاب ناي; born March 12, 1952) is an American poet, editor, songwriter, and novelist. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she began composing her first poem at the age of six. In total, she has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry. Her works include poetry, young-adult fiction, picture books, and novels. Nye received the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in honor of her entire body of work as a writer, and in 2019 the Poetry Foundation designated her the Young People's Poet Laureate for the 2019–21 term.
Naomi Shihab Nye - Wikipedia
https://poets.org/poet/naomi-shihab-nye

Poems
— Poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye - Kindness | My Friend's Divorce | Hidden - Greek translation
— So Much Happiness / Τόση ευτυχία (Naomi Shihab Nye / Ναόμι Σίχαμπ Νάι, μετάφραση Ούρσουλα Φωσκόλου)
— Two Countries

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So Much Happiness / Τόση ευτυχία (Naomi Shihab Nye, μετάφραση Ούρσουλα Φωσκόλου)

So Much Happiness It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change. But happiness floats. It doesn’t need you to hold it down. It doesn’t need anything. Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to. You are happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches, and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and scratched records . . . Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.

Τόση ευτυχία Δύσκολο να μάθεις πώς διαχειρίζεται κανείς τόση ευτυχία. Στη λύπη υπάρχει κάτι απτό, κάτι που επάνω του έχεις να τριφτείς, σαν πληγή να το γιατρέψεις, με μπαμπάκι και λοσιόν. Όταν ο κόσμος καταρρέει γύρω σου, έχεις τα κομμάτια του να σηκώσεις, κάτι για να κρατήσεις μες στη φούχτα, σαν απόκομμα εισιτηρίου ή σαν ψιλά. Όμως η ευτυχία ίπταται. Δεν σε χρειάζεται για να κρατηθεί. Τίποτα δεν χρειάζεται. Η ευτυχία κατεβαίνει στη στέγη του διπλανού σπιτιού, τραγουδώντας, κι εξαφανίζεται πάλι, όταν αυτή θελήσει. Όπως και να ‘χει, εσύ είσαι ευτυχής. Και τ’ ότι έζησες κάποια εποχή ειρηνικά σ’ ένα δεντρόσπιτο μα τώρα σε τρώει ο θόρυβος κι η σκόνη, δεν είναι ικανό για να σε κάνει δυστυχή. Όλα έχουν μια ζωή δική τους, μπορούν να ξυπνήσουν ξέχειλα από δυνατότητες γλυκού για τον καφέ και ώριμου ροδάκινου, και ν’ αγαπήσουν ως και το πάτωμα που πρέπει να σκουπιστεί, τα βρώμικα σεντόνια και τους γρατζουνισμένους δίσκους… Μιας και δεν υπάρχει τόπος έτσι μεγάλος που να χωρά τόση ευτυχία, εσύ αδιάφορα σηκώνεις τα χέρια και διοχετεύεται από μέσα σου σε οτιδήποτε αγγίζεις. Δεν έχεις ευθύνη. Δεν παίρνεις όμως ούτε και τα εύσημα, όπως ο ουρανός δεν υπερηφανεύεται για το φεγγάρι, που ωστόσο το κρατά και το μοιράζεται και με τον τρόπο αυτό, μάς γίνεται γνωστό.

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Two Countries
Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
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.