Canvas To Delirium
An Account of the First Three Years
of the Lebanese Civil War
A Boyhood Remembrance
in Fourteen Passages
by Mohamad Said Bazzi
(2023)
1 .
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.
2 .
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.
3 .
In the year nineteen handir and
sequøndüry tuwree
In the year mille nϟf cent and
sôixante seized
For three years time stopped
The fluff of '70 to '75 eclipsed by the
'73 to '78 blast.
4 .
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.
5 .
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.
6 .
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.
7 .
Great aunts you reckon you must’ve met
Genteel white chiffon mandeels, laid
casually on genteel black chiffon
slender-bone shoulders
Patent black leather reflective snapped purses,
gold clasped, like pliant pyramids
sitting prudently in laps
Sparkling black eyes, bundled in dark
earthy cheekbones, wondering silently
what hell will next pass.
8 .
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.
9 .
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.
10 .
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
11 .
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
Venomous asps
Lightning blitz
Terrible pterodactyl trespass.
12 .
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.
13 .
Children freely playing between adult legs
and airport barricade racks
Aluminum 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 rosebush and sage garden
But no such courage for a tiny subordinate
boy, complying with his distressed,
adamant, shell-shocked dad.
14 .
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.