Thursday, July 20, 2006

A Sigh for Beirut

They found you ripe

They raped you--

They raked your languid eyes.

Your sleep is naked now and you can only snore.

They streaked your forehead with sirens--

They combed your hair with shells and warheads.

You are dishevelled, Beirut!

Your head was my dream--

It is a tunneled carbuncle.

They couldn't fathom your perfume--

They bathed you in pain and screams.

Your languid eyes, Beirut, are your pulse.

Are they counting time?

How ironic!

Your timeless face, Beirut, is pleading:

Is there no end to time?

We were taught that royal purple and anemones

were born on your shores,

and that blood never courted your sands.

Oh! the purple disowned itself,

and the red tiles ambushed your autumn leaves.

Your doors and windows no longer sing--

They can only cringe, with disgust.

Stones, shadows, buds reel in sorrow,

and with supplicant eyes covet your supple lips--

But your face is a plain of gunpowder and dust.

I know you, Beirut!

I know you will rise like a boiling pot of milk!

like your plump smile like your tipsy voice.

Oh, Beirut! Could I sing to your feral days or nights?

all paeans now are jejune.

Mansour Ajami (B. 1941) was born in Saghbine, West Bekaa, Lebanon. Among his scholarly publications are The Neckveins of Winter: The Controversy over Natural and Artificial Poetry in Medieval Arabic Literary Criticism (1984) and The Alchemy of Glory: The Dialectic of Truthfulness and Untruthfulness in Medieval Arabic Literary Criticism (1988). He is also a poet, musician, singer, and translator. "A Sigh for Beirut" (unpublished, 1982) was originally written in English.

Bearing Witness

For Beirut I write . . .

Like veiled women,

years listen at doors,

seasons close their eyelids,

softly touch her broken fragments,

and the burnt soutane of her walls.

The wind alone enters into rooms and murmurs softly.

No one interrupts its monologue.

For Beirut I write . . .

The chalky side of the empty market,

the barked wire planted in the blood stained quarters of the latest battles,

the black opening of galleries on dark cliffs.

Signs engraved in passage ways,

carved within buildings,

the grey dust which speaks for the anger of fire.

Behind a shutter two tearless eyes.

A far away voice recites prayers.

A worried cat removes a bit of its prey.

For Beirut I write . . .

How trivial it would be for old crews to fix their silks over this city sunk in her misery.

Let memory manage its gold over splinters,

make wounds guilty,

humiliate the kidnapped Capital,

and burden her with regrets.

For Beirut I write . . .

To call again,

to love in vain,

to lose one's self and sleep in this ship betrayed by its song and its lust for life.

For Beirut I write . . .

Her dress made of a thousand alliances,

her chequered fabric,

her dark arteries,

her orders at night,

and her stones reddened each day by her light.

For Beirut I write . . .

So that I watch her as she comes back to life,

as she attends to her chores with time,

with death,

with the denial of absence.

I watch her as she invents this sand

which puffs and covers up with the same whiteness the tombstones and the cornfields.

Claire Gebeyli (B. 1930) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Greek origin. She married a Lebanese and lived most of her life in Lebanon. She is currently an Associate Editor of the Lebanese French daily, L'Orientle Jour, where she is also a regular columnist, combining poetry and journalism to create a unique editorial style.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Simple Math

One cigarette for two

One toothbrush for four

One mind, one soul

Two hearts

One beat

three times the speed

Zero pain, 100% gain

Pure love.