I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

^{If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to
find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness.
Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.
—Thomas Merton, from “New Seeds of Contemplation,” 1961}

^{I swear to God, mom, I am exhausted, but praise be to God in all circumstances.
—writing, translated from the Arabic, on the Al-Shifa Hospital walls, April 2024}

All I can see is nothing
Fields of

Hollow
The O that escapes

A pasture of
Mouths

An apartment building
Of locked jaws

The silent weeping
Of rocks

I hear nothing
In the bags of soft limbs sighing

Milk teeth
Sharpening a father’s heart

The cone hat on the small head
Singing to plumes

Iftar in the tents
Flapping pages off the moon

But Your name over and over
On the hospital walls

But Your name stilling
The fire that does not cease

But Your name everywhere
Everything all at once

I see nothing
From this distance

This deepest night
This longest darkness

Fumble at fajr
To loosen my gasps

I repeat Your name
Over and over

Then bow to Your wisdom
To the terror of Your liberation

O that I may not see anything
More

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.