Kindness

The poem opens by speaking to the reader: “Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things” (Lines 1-2). In this context, “you” refers both to the impersonal “someone” as well as creating an intimate connection with the reader—the microcosmic and the macrocosmic, the personal and the universal. Loss is a consistent thread throughout the poem, as the speaker escalates their imagery of what can be easily taken away in an instant. In the first stanza, the future can be lost as easily as “salt in a weakened broth” (Line 4). The image juxtaposes the domesticity of household life with the idea of a future crumbling beyond control to illustrate how easily such a moment can arise without warning.

The image crystallizes as the speaker compares it to something “counted and carefully saved” (Line 6), alluding to both spendable currency and years of life. The speaker suggests that all of this comfort and stability must disappear for one to truly grasp the depth of how life changing an act of kindness can be. The final lines in the first stanza show a group of bus riders moving ever forward, unable or unwilling to see the cruelties and tragedies around them. These people serve as a metaphor for the wider world, for the people who have not suffered enough loss to understand true connection and compassion.

The second stanza is the shortest of the poem and serves as a narrative hinge. It takes the poem to its most dramatic and emphatic image: “you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho / lies dead by the side of the road” (Lines 15-16). Here, the idea of a dissolving future takes on a more literal shape as the poem illustrates the way a future can disappear, not as a figurative simile, but as a real person whose journey has been cut short. Even the line itself, “lies dead by the side of the road” (Line 16), makes use of consonance to emphasize its meaning; the series of three hard Ds in a row exhibits a heavy sense of finality and closure. The speaker moves from the image of senseless death back to the reader: “You must see how this could be you” (Line 17). In contrast to the first stanza, in which the onlookers keep themselves at an impersonal distance, this stanza reminds the reader that there truly is no distance at all. The speaker implores the reader to remember that there is no social, racial, or economic divide that protects them from the whims of fate: This is why the poem’s central thematic message is so important.

The final stanza shifts away from literal language and hard consonants to the lighter, more lyrical language dense with repetition. The first few lines repeat the words “deepest thing,” “sorrow,” and “kindness” several times in succession, using language to highlight the fact that these two states are intrinsically interconnected; they are two sides of one whole. The speaker encourages the reader to not only experience sorrow but to embrace it and understand it in all its facets. At this point, one can “[catch] the thread of all sorrows” (Line 25) and see the place one has in the larger fabric of human existence. In the final lines, the poem introduces personification for the first time; kindness becomes a living, breathing entity that accompanies the speaker “like a shadow or a friend” (Line 34). The juxtaposition of “shadow” and “friend” mirrors the juxtaposition between kindness and sorrow, once again illustrating that the two are facets of each other. It also suggests that both kindness and sorrow can be a comfort or a burden at different times and in different ways. By closing the poem on its use of personification, the speaker sets up kindness not as a single action or decision, but as something to engage with in a lifelong journey.