Canvas To Delirium
A Boyhood Remembrance of the
First Years of the Lebanese Civil War
by Mohamad Said Bazzi
(2023)
. 1974 .
The origin story of this canvas
Painted in an onyx haze
Filmed shadow velvet
At the peak of sun’s death
The peak lowest point
Of a setting province
Late day seeping twilight
When human chameleons are at their weakest
Sandy-aura-umber tones
Give way to charcoal-black-sap
A lull between the next war and the last
. 1975 .
Echoes of boyhood's national calamities
Farmhouse family room hushed for naps
Mandarin-olive-ochre
Psychedelic swirled sofas
Under missile blast
Womb cushions endure
Dry-mud ceiling collapse
Exposing poor sponge
And metal-spring entrails
. 197XTФ .
In the year
Nineteen handir and sequøndüry tuwree
In the year
Mille nœüf cent and sôixante seized
For three years time stopped
The fluff of '70-to-'75
Eclipsed by the '73-to-'78 blast
. 1976 .
Disco bridegrooms
Escaped with their last breath
Long polyester lapel spreads
Cramp-wrinkled
Under Kalashnikov sling straps
Makeshift rifles for immediate defense
Suddenly stacked and grabbed
The coming delirium of war’s
Most popular front fictions
Factions for liberation spawned legends
Brandishing claws
Through Southbound shadow fleeings
Refuge runnings for a week
Pleading dialed-up shelter borrowings
Three dozen squat-huddled
Under tenement stairs, trapped
Children squeezed, mothers whimpering
Or voiceless gasps
Fathers peek out
Scampering for food or passageways
Two lost and three remaining
. 1977 .
Three springs in three villages
And a girl’s wildflower hill delights
Three missed school years, and a boy’s
Maximalist euphoric frights
Surrogate village classrooms
Discipline teachings
Slap-dashed and patched
Farm boys riding plows
And farm men raising flags
Great aunts you reckon you must’ve met
Patent black leather reflective snapped purses
Gold clasped
Like pliant pyramids
Sitting prudently in laps
Genteel white chiffon mandeels
Laid casually on
Genteel black chiffon slender-bone shoulders
Sparkling black eyes
Bundled in brown earthy cheekbones
Wondering silently what hell will next pass
. 1958 .
Mid-century's postcolonial
Newly middle-classed hopefuls, dashed
Sudanese theorists and Palestinian poets
Egyptian architects and Syrian machinists
Yemeni engineers and Algerian ceramists
Lebanese teachers and Iraqi chemists
Tunisian journalists and Libyan nurses
Disintegrated altogether into the cauldron bog
Of Kissinger’s remix simmerings
. 1977 .
All the while families in fright
Flee from the last clash
To the nearest village still with roofs
To shelter their desperate backs
Encountering new strangers
Some familiar to the eyes, and unfamiliar
Eyes look into eyes
Uneasy soft speech to crack fearful masks
Negotiating rice rations, rumors, pots,
Sleeping rooms, doors, and outdoor water taps
Obliged houses
Repurposed for multitudes
And for cherished torn maps
No thoughts of tomorrow
The world shrunken to now, and trapped
Village duck ponds
Tucked between shadow trees, cooling breeze
Lush leafy hideaways
For migrant children's bashful meetups
Rhymed jump games
On dusty water-sprinkled pebble paths
مَنديـلــِك ِ مْنَـيَّل مَنديلـي بــلا نيلـي
. 1956 .
War-room board-room
Multi-pronged catapults
Murmurings, salivations
Lustful declarations, lip-smacked
Red hands on desks, hard-slapped
Atlantis wind direction
Iron oxen onslaught
Newly spirited sea-myth hordes
And venomous asps
Lightning blitz
Terrible pterodactyl trespass
. 1978 .
Beirut to Detroit flash-voyage
Would turn the page away from all that
Mothers and fathers in airport lines
Panic dragged
Counted desperations
Hastily tied and packed
Airport policeman shouting hysterics
Unaware of his own torn or lost visor strap
Conducting trails of people
Evacuated from exploded lands
Children freely playing between adult legs
And aluminum airport barricade racks
Gaps just wide enough for a small boy
To swing under and vanish in a flash
Sneak and run back
To a grandmother's white rose and sage garden
But no such courage for a tiny subordinate boy
Complying with his adamant and distressed
Shell-shocked dad
Global supernovel posited us
Into a shaft of hurt delirium
Dropped from the sky into an orange leafy
Michigan sidewalk evening rain
Begin again
In a refuge cedar basement with eight beds
Uncles and aunts and cousins and found kin
One large kettle to feed a village tribe, Transplanted to drift
To this day undying,
Searching for our unspoken breath
Hovering in sunbeams,
Destined to refract