Classic Poem

From early dusk the day was inscrutable
The sun shows up, lazy as usual
A mineral ash, eastward, blocks the horizon …
In the veins of clouds
In household pipes
The water was hard …
A desperate autumn in the life of Beirut
Death spread from the palace
to the radio to the salesman of sex
To the vegetable market

What is it wakes you now?
Exactly five o'clock
And thirty people killed
Go back to sleep
It is a time of death and a time of fire

Ibrahim was a painter
He painted water
He was a deck for lilies to grow on
And terrible if woken up at dawn

But his children were spun of lilac and sunlight
They wanted milk and a loaf of bread
. . . .

Inscrutable day. My face
A telegram made of wheat in a field of bullets
What is it wakes you now
Exactly five o'clock
And thirty people killed
. . . .

Bread never had this taste before
This blood this whispering texture this grand apprehension
complete essence this voice this time this colour this
art this human energy this secret this magic this
unique movement from the cavern of origin to
the gang war to the tragedy of Beirut

At exactly five o'clock
Who was dying?

Into his hands Ibrahim took the last color
Color of the secrets in the elements
A painter and a rebel he painted
A land teeming with people, oak trees, and war
Ocean waves, working people, street vendors, countryside

And he paints
In the miracle of bread
A body teeming with a country pulverized
And he paints
The festival of land and man: a warm loaf of morning

The earth was a loaf
The sun a loaf
In a loaf of bread Ibrahim was a whole people

Hide from him
The autumn, hide from him his blood,
Hide from him the finger accusing, the hard water
Let him complete the victorious painting
Let him complete the heroic epic

Now he is finished
Exactly six o'clock
His blood in his loaf
His loaf in his blood
Now