Gezi Park, 2013
When bulldozers rolled on, poems of protest covered the walls
At nightfall, they melt into a sea of discontent, glide
like a procession
of fireflies answering the same call. Invisible hands
hold a flickering
candle, feet stomp ebony streets, at times, a face
appears outlined like
a picture and its negative.
Staring through windowpanes and balconies, eyes follow
the silent
march. Flames rise, scintillate under streetlights. Each
tiny flame, a
prayer for trees to breathe in the heart of the city
where voices are
heard riding the wind, where whispers seep through
rustling leaves,
reach benches where lovers hold hands, spin around street
artists,
pause by storytellers, into children’s curls, before
landing on the
forgotten newspaper where words in suspension gather
strength.
And the roots remember, strong rhizomes stretch elastic
limbs, new
shoots yawn awakened by
dawn, echoing millenary murmurs.
First published by Solstice
Literary Review
From Under
Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)
The
Road to Tyre
spreads its loose ribbon along the
shoreline,
through orange groves hedged with white jasmine...
"We'll stop at Sidon,"
you once said, "I'll tell you
the secrets of every stone,
of every carving. We'll bring
back a blue vase
of iridescent blown-glass,
perhaps a small narguileh."
On the roadside, an old peasant
wearing a white shirt
and gathered black pants
leads a donkey
loaded with fruit baskets.
"I'd like to buy pomegranates
to share when we return
to Beirut," I thought.
"I'll part the red leathered
skin, roll the ruby seeds
beneath my fingers
one by one."
I can still feel the salty breeze
on my lips, the warm,
dizzying scent of orange
blossoms, a bridesmaid's
endless walk to the altar.
We never made it to Tyre
that day.
We never saw the Crusaders'
Castle together,
we'll never cross its paved
causeway hand in hand,
a narrow path, invisible
from a distance,
like a carpet thrown over
the blue waters, linking
its threshold to the shore.
Year after year
we dreamt of going South
again. The pomegranates
untouched,
forgotten on a shelf
receded in my mind,
they must have shriveled
like the fruits I pick
with care, then throw
out the window, deep
into
woods.
First published by Parting Gifts
From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
Raoucheh,
Thirty-five
years later, Beirut’s Pigeons’ Rock
forever mute witness of the civil war
a huge rock erect
where
purple evenings
conjure
Phoenician sails,
a backdrop to tales heard
as a
child, of lovers hiding,
often
drowning in its grotto's
emerald tears.
I
used to imagine
how
the Champollion,
a ship
venturing too close,
lay
trapped for years
in
blue mist,
her
insides
torn apart by this Giant's
unclenched fist,
stopped
in slow motion,
in an
idle attempt to rise,
petrified by salt spray,
her
remains buried
in
quicksand
in the
midst of the Bay.
A fallen Olympian,
forever flanked
by
dancing waves,
its ire, our inner
obscure well, as if
casting
a black
cloud
over the former
brightness of sails,
rustling canopies,
over
our steps along
the Promenade
des Français,
breeze
flowing
through
my curls, gusts
of
wind sculpting
our
bodies, redesigning
silhouettes,
erasing footsteps,
echoes of laughter,
muffled
sighs,
all
the people
long
gone.
Some, as pawns
on a
map, glided to
another
turquoise Bay,
in
Jounieh,
along the wavering coastline,
an
ersatz, surviving its artifice...
There, people of the same faith
pull
on the narguilehs
in the
cafés,
play dice and backgammon,
women
of the same clan
stretch
their smooth,
lustrous
bodies
under
the midday sun
deserting Raoucheh's
corniche
its
rocky shores now crowded
only
by male bathers
and fishermen,
while the imposing stone horseshoe
clamped
in indigo
is no
longer a good omen
after so many years
of
fallen,
dismantled
bodies
blown
up theaters,
casinos,
snipers’ crossfire
from deserted terraces,
the
air still remembers
the
smell of fear
and
gunpowder,
its acrid taste unmasked
by
the unrelenting fumes
of
daily exhausts.
In
every corner,
next
to a restored building,
an old
house stands, scarred,
windowless,
phantomlike,
awaiting mouth agape
the
miraculous facelift.
The burning sun tires
of
recycling endless debris
left
over by thousands,
the
waste of hatred,
and
time, once a healer
broods
despair.
Some far away will dream
a
laced balcony,
delicate
mosaics, unfaded,
patina adding its final touch
to
pink façades, sepia walls
faceted stones,
deeply engraved in the retina
unfolding
in the mirrors
of our
minds.
I recall how wafts of orange blossoms
mixed
with effluvia
of
salty breeze,
once
whispering under pillars
and
arcades, would reach us
as we rested under a Jacaranda’s
trembling blue shade.
I often gazed through thick glass,
at
the delicate displays of vials and flasks
rescued
from the depths
of
Tyre and Sidon
gilded by time,
marveled at the fluidity of erosion
over
blown glass
and
burnished metals,
all pearl-like treasures forever gone,
like
so many of us,
the
lucky ones
fading away in distant lands
dreaming new dreams,
our children unaware
of what is no longer there,
unable to hear the voices
we
cannot silence
the song of the orphans
the song of the fishermen's nets
the song of the abandoned house
the song of the goat living in a palace
the song of the refugees milking a goat over
Persian carpets
the song of the windshields constellated with
stars of death
the song of the driver forced to leave his car
at an intersection
the song of an entire school bus emasculated
because they were Maronites
the song of mothers and children blown up
because they were not Maronites
the song of a town torn apart, its children
hanging like heavy fruits from olive
and
almond-trees, nipples and testicles dripping with blood on the lower branches
the song still heard through murmuring leaves,
cacti and pine needles, as the roots remember
the song of Beirut burning us safe watching
the flames from a hill,
waiting for the madness to reach the mountains
the song of the man who never returned home,
his head rolling behind his car
the song of a fool who crossed the green line
to meet his Muslim lover,
only
to be found the next day in a small bag under the infamous bridge
the song of the silent ride over the bridge of
death, the only way to the airport.
I ran to have a passport picture taken with
the two of you,
tried
to comb your hair as best as I could.
Your hair so fine, it curled around my fingers.
First published by Mizna Literary Journal
From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
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