Little Cento,* Looking for Birds and Stars

No bird builds a wall.  
 
Outside, in a country with no word
for outside, they cluster on trees.  

The war brought the dead, the mothers the cries
of newborns. 

Time is a scarecrow 
And finally as little as nothing.  

or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.  

I'll be a fig or a sycamore tree  

The bees dead someday, just like us.  

I learned how to find the new moon by looking for the circular absence
of stars. 

 


 [*Source texts: Naomi Shihab Nye, Philip Metres, Zeina Hashem Beck, 
Najwan Darwish, Wisława Szymborska, Mosab Abu Toha, Fady 
Joudah, Tarik Dobbs, Kazim Ali]