Sand Opera began as a daily Lenten meditation, working with the testimonies of the tortured at Abu Ghraib, to witness to their suffering. My desire in Sand Opera is to make the Iraq War and the wider war on terror visible, to make a visible and audible map of it, a map that we would carry in our eyes and ears, in our bodies and hearts, to replace the maps of pundits and demagogues.
As Isaiah writes, “Morning after morning/ He opens my ear that I may hear.” Sand Opera is the sound of my listening. These poems carry forth voices that have opened me—an Arab-American living through the paranoid days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and my daughter’s coming to consciousness in a world where war leaks through the radio and television. The words of my daughter at the end of the poem “Hung Lyres” embody what I hope I can continue to open myself into:
What does it mean, I say. She says, it means
to be quiet, just by yourself. She says, there’s
a treasure chest inside. You get to dig it out.
Somehow, it’s spring. Says, will it always
rain? In some countries, I say, they are
praying for rain. She asks, why do birds sing?
In the dream, my notebook dipped in water,
all the writing lost. Says, read the story again.
But which one? That which diverts the mind
is poetry. Says, you know those planes
that hit those buildings? Asks, why do birds sing?
When the storm ends, she stops, holds her hands
together, closes her eyes. What are you doing?
I’m praying for the dead worms. Says, listen:
– PHILIP METRES
