Things You’ve Never Seen
Fady Joudah
When I tell it, the first time
I saw hail, I say
it was in a desert and knocked
a man unconscious
then drove a woman into my arms
because she thought the end was near
but I assured her
this wasn’t the case.
When he tells it,
he smiles, says the first winter
after their exodus
was the coldest.
Rare snow
came down, and his mother,
who knew what the fluff was
but until then had never seen it,
woke him and said, Look outside,
what do you see?
She called his name twice.
It was dark. Snow fell
a paragraph to sum up
decades of heat. He had
no answer. She said,
this is flour from heaven.
When he tells it,
he’s an old man returning
to his mother.
