Classic Poem

An apple for the sea, marble narcissus flower
Stone butterfly, Beirut
Shape of the soul in a mirror
Description of the first woman, smell of early mist
Beirut is built of gold and fatigue
Of Andalusia and Damascus
Silver, seafoam, bequests of earth in the plumage of doves
Death of a cornstalk
Vagrancy of a fugitive star between my love and me
Beirut — I did not hear my blood before I uttered
The name of a mistress
Who sleeps across my blood, who sleeps
. . . .

Captives we are in this flabby age
Invaders have delivered us up to our kin
No sooner had we gripped the earth than our protector
Pounced on our weddings and memory
So we distributed our songs among the sentries. . . .
We found nothing to indicate our identity
Except our blood that climbs the walls and in secret
We sing:
Beirut our tent
Beirut our star
... Beirut, shape of shade. . . .
She tempts us with a thousand overtures
And with new alphabets
Beirut our only tent
Beirut our only star
. . . .

A grey horizon scatters in the distance
Circle paths of mother-of-pearl, not roads
And from Hell to the Atlantic
From the Gulf to Hell right left and center
I saw nothing but a scaffold
With one single rope for two million necks
I see armed cities of paper that bristle
With kings and khaki
. . . .

I see cities crowning their conquerors
And the East sometimes is the opposite of the West
Sometimes the East of the West
Its image and commodity
I see cities crowning their conquerors
Exporting martyrs in order to import whiskey
And the latest thing in sex and torture
. . . .

I see cities that hang their lovers over branches of iron
And drive away the names at dawn

At dawn the guardian of the only idol comes
With a million keys and one scaffold
What are we leaving if not a prison
What have the prisoners got to lose?
We walk toward a distant song
A first freedom
We sense the world's enchantment for the first time
This dawn is blue
And the air can be seen and eaten like figs
. . . .

Is Beirut a mirror that we can break
To enter into the fragments
Or are we mirrors for the drizzle to shatter?
. . . .

Beirut, markets hung over the sea
An economy that destroys production
To build hotels and restaurants
A government in a street or an apartment
A coffee bar that turns like the sunflower to the sun
Description of departure and free beauty
Paradise of documents
A seat in the plumage of a bird
Mountains that bow to the sea
A sea that ascends to the mountains
A deer slain by the wings of a sparrow
And a people that do not like the shade
. . . .

We burned our boats and hung our stars over the outer walls
We did not search for our ancestors in the family trees
We did not travel further than pure bread and our clothes of mud
To the mother-of-pearl of ancient lakes we sent no pictures of our fathers
We were not born asking. . . .
We were born every which way
Spread like ants over a mat of straw
Then we became horses that pull carriages

We who stand in the line of fire
We have burned our boats and embraced our rifles
We shall awaken this land that rested on our blood
And extract our fallen victims from its cells
We shall wash their hair clean with our white tears
Pour over their hands the milk of the soul
. . . .

We who stand in the line of fire declare:
Until the night shall pass
We are in the trenches
Beirut eternal we gaze upon the sands
In the beginning we were not created
In the beginning was the word
And now in the trenches
A birth is being prepared
. . . .

A moon shattered over the bench of darkness
Beirut is a lily of rubble
A first kiss
Eulogy of the Zanzalakht tree
Cloaks for the sea and the slain
Roofs for the stars and the tents
Stone poem
Collision between two nightingales hidden in the heart
A bereft sky
Thinking on a stone
A rose that can be heard, Beirut
A voice that separates the victim from the sword
A little boy who flung away the regulations and commands
And the mirrors —
Then fell asleep