for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem <br /> <br />My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes, <br />the damp shine of a goat’s new skin. <br />When I was sick they followed me, <br />I woke from the long fever to find them <br />covering my head like cool prayers. <br /> <br />My grandmother’s days are made of bread, <br />a round pat-pat and the slow baking. <br />She waits by the oven watching a strange car <br />circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son, <br />lost to America. More often, tourists, <br />who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines. <br />She knows how often mail arrives, <br />how rarely there is a letter. <br />When one comes, she announces it, a miracle, <br />listening to it read again and again <br />in the dim evening light. <br /> <br />My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her. <br />Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby. <br />She knows the spaces we travel through, <br />the messages we cannot send—our voices are short <br />and would get lost on the journey. <br />Farewell to the husband’s coat, <br />the ones she has loved and nourished, <br />who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky. <br />They will plant themselves. We will all die. <br /> <br />My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death. <br />When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press, <br />when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms, <br />He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name. <br />“Answer, if you hear the words under the words— <br />otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges, <br />difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”<br /><br />Naomi Shihab Nye<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-words-under-the-words/
