“Once upon a time
There was an old woman
Wise and blind.
She could see into the future.
She could draw pictures with words.
The old woman was visited by
Young people
Who mocked her clairvoyance.
One of them says,
“Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird.
Tell me: Is it living or dead?”
At first the old woman doesn’t answer.
Eventually, she says,
“I don’t know whether the bird you hold
Is dead or alive,
But what I do know is,
It is in your hands
That it is in your hands.”
This a compilation of exerpts from a story Toni Morrison told when she received the Nobel Prize in Literature
December 1993