Big City, Little

Beirut

The Rug Beater
George Dickerson

Come over to the window,
...Love....
See the Arab woman...
On the roof below?
...There!...
The one beating
Mercilessly
...Her rug...
With a ragged broom...
As if she could swat
...Away...
The dusty footprints
Of her oft-swept
...Dead...
Who've loitered there...
Watch her face
...Explode...
And the flowers of her blood
...Stipple...
Beirut's crippled
...Streets...
As far as Sin-el-Fil....
You don't see her?
...Oh!...
Well, now you know
What's in my head...
...Why...
(When darkness
...Smacks...
Our room...your eyes
Not stars but bullet
...Holes...
Your mouth a
...Wound...)
I tremble
...So.

 
Perspectives on the Death
of Poetry in Beirut
George Dickerson

The commando cradled the poem in his arm.
When he made the poem speak, it spit stanzas
At pedestrians who fled from poetry.
From the rocket launcher a barrage of poems
Burst like roses in the street. The eloquent shards
Inscribed the houses with an elegy.
Fragments of the poem's petals were found
In the face and chest of a young girl
Overcome by the eternal aspect of poetry.
At night, when we fought with fitful sleep,
The deep guttural throat of poetry roared
Across the rooftops and devoured our dreams.
A wayward poem entered the boy's head
And left his eyes hollow with amazement.
A poem snatched hunger
From twenty people waiting for bread.
Two poems recklessly slit each other's bellies.
The head of a truncated poem
Was proudly impaled on a barricade.
From the cellar, where fifteen poems lay crushed,
Oozed the sweet odor of poetry.
When the plane lifted off over Beirut,
I could see poems shrouding the city,
And I abandoned poetry.