Literary Analysis - Jerusalem - Nye

In the poem "Jerusalem" Nye writes about the long standing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. She tells us the story of her father who was hit in the head with a stone one day as a child, the spot in which he was struck never grew hair, yet he did not lay in the dirt and wallow in his pain he got back up. Such is the nature of the thousands of years of conflict between Israeli and Palestinian. Both have suffered incalculable pain in the past, the Holocaust for the Israelis in which six million lost their lives or the loss of their country for the Palestinians following the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 in which 725,000 had to leave their homes, of this there is no doubt, yet unlike her father these two remain on the ground drowning in the wrongs committed to them, surviving adversity yet not overcoming it.

At one point Nye writes, “He’s painting a bird with wings wide enough to cover two roofs at once" (93). This outlines the desire for peace among the people and that contrary to the history of the Palestinians and Israelis that their homeland is a homeland for both and that the ability for these two great cultures to coexist in a state of peace does in fact exist, they only have to accept each other.

This poem expresses frustration at the pace of which people will bring their dreams of peace to fruition. The feeling that peace is so simple, while war is complicated is conveyed as well as a sense of befuddlement at how these two factions continue to war against each other again and again, pausing only to contemplate new ways to inflict casualties on the other.

Nye writes, "It's late but everything comes next" (93). I interpret this to mean that eventually Israeli and Palestinian will realize they share a homeland and will drop their arms and embrace one another, for that is the only way in which they can see a day in which sons will bury their fathers again instead of the other way around.