Classic Poem

Every evening before the sea departs from Beirut
he leaves a desire with her,
an apprehension. Like any little boy,
the sea dreams that what besieges
Beirut and bursts in her heart is
nothing but a fleeting passion;
nothing but a nightmare born
in her bed and gone scurrying
through her streets and hotels,
pausing at the harbor and
melting in every atom of the air.

Every evening the sea sends her his good wishes
and letters;
when roused by the sound of guns
and roaring tanks, he
is overcome by surprise or terror
seeing the stiff corpses on the ground,
in the corners and curbs.

The sea is naive, stands
on the shore staring at Beirut
wet with fire, water, smoke,
then hoards his desire and sleeps.

In Beirut man borrows the sea's waves
but not his naivete
and in one fleeting moment spans
the years of life and discovers
that everything changes,
that everything is bathed in
a vision of destruction; he thinks
of Parliament, State, the national flag
and the South.
When did they all exist?

He thinks that
the abandonment of the old happiness
the familiarity
the friendly faces
now takes place
in the firelight
of bombs and shells
along shadowed streets
lined with corpses.

He contemplates:
return is impossible
to what came
before the beginning.