And this one ''Dahlia and Fadwa'', different speaker.
''When I see her come through the orchard toward my house I
begin composing answers to the words with which
she'll challenge me.
Her vision, precise and focused, as if every letter
were drawn beforehand.
She stops, stoops toward a flower she doesn't pick,
and the word I'm left is, sister.
As if she were coming to visit a younger
sister after a long absence.
As if this stranger's house were where she'd watched
my awkward gestures flower to eloquence.
As if I had measured her words from a wider world each time
a letter arrived, message inhabited by a vision.
But I was the only messenger of my vision.
My father died.
There was no brother or sister, but the orphan's
clan of branching letters.
I taught myself.
I moved from house to house with a dented trunk, a few books,
many words, and acid fruit preceding its own flower.
Am I named for a traitor or for a flower?
Blood and fire have cindered and stained my vision.
I curse their politics, they praise my words.
What answer can I give my older sister when I open the door?
Welcome her into my house and she hands
me the incriminating letter?
Well, I imagine opening a letter after scouring the sink,
dusting a loaf with flour, that tells me my house
no longer is my house.
Beyond the window and my field of vision,
my son is shouting something to his sister.
And it's hard all at once to make out their words.
But in my yellow kitchen these are only words
I can pronounce correctly in the letters of my sister's
language.
Language that is sister to mine.
I watched her flame and flower as boys threw stones,
spliced shots on television.
And felt the leaning walls of my bright house.
In that threatened house, at a loss for words,
my letter would be subject to revision.
Flow or gutter.
Never reach my sister''.