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 "A Sigh for Beirut" (unpublished, 1982) was originally written in English.