<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Migrant Earth</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><i style="font-size: 14px;" class="">So tell me what you think of when the sky is ashen?</i></div><div class=""><i style="font-size: 14px;" class=""> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Mahmoud Darwish</i></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I could tell you that listening is made for the ashen sky,</div><div class="">and instead of the muezzin's voice, which lingers</div><div class="">like weeping at dawn,</div><div class="">I hear my own desire, as I lay my lips against my mother's cheek.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I kneel down beside her, recalling her pleas</div><div class="">the day she flung open the gates of her house</div><div class="">for children fleeing from tanks.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My mother is from Gaza, but what do I know of the migrant earth,</div><div class="">as I enter a Gazan rooftop and perform ablutions in the ashen</div><div class="">forehead of sky? As my soul journeys and wrinkles with homeland?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I could tell you that I parted with my mother at the country</div><div class="">of skin. In the dream,</div><div class="">my lips were bruised, her body was whole again, and we danced</div><div class="">naked in the street.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And no child understands absence past the softness</div><div class="">of palms.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">As though it is praise in my father's palms</div><div class="">as he washes my mother's body in the final ritual.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">As though it is God's pulse that comes across</div><div class="">her face and disappears</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Deema K. Shehab</div></div></body></html>