Like Beirut

I’ve been like Beirut,
constructed of the unlike in the like
and of the exact opposite.
Heaven, seek mercy
even for me.

I’ve heard them tell me that it’s a treasure hoarded
for my good,
that life in these diseased streets is more enlivening,
in the labyrinthine channels of my subconscious.
There the rival militias, from Hay A-sulum to Ahrafiya,
gain in me to the last drop of my blood
a godly joy.

For I was the combat in the built up zones
looking out, furtively, from the upper stories,
divided into no-man’s lands, watchful as a perennial high alert.
A coal-black vow: just a bit more.

And so I’ve heard that from extremes in living souls
rises the hidden force
that mainly makes for beauty.
Look, another lovely woman in black, her hands on her head,
weeping within me at the doorstep,
telling the reporters something in broken English.

I’m like Beirut a worshipper of other gods,
half-ruined.
Ever more furrowed, ever more graying
And within me there’s no sign of a ceasefire, a brief respite,
a breather for the snipers.

LIKE BEIRUT