Beirut

       For N

      That rusting water tower collapsing

      on its ruin was the movie theater

      where lovers sat in smoky consternation

      while James Bond lit his cigarettes.

      The mirrored shopping mall selling

      push-up jeans and gleaming watches

      used to be the souk, where an old man

      sold za’atar for small change.

      Here, on the corner, where your

      father explained to a gun in his mouth:

      he was driving back to the

      apartment to pick up the dog you left

      behind, here, the apartment given

      to the head of the Deuxième Bureau,

      because when such a man asked for a

      favor, he didn’t ask, and you didn’t say no.

      This corner, where the sea shines in the

      near distance, where Marianne was shot

      through the mouth and wondered, as she

      lay, if another bullet would come. Over here,

      at that shop where we found the mother-of-

      pearl table, the hotel where snipers played

      God and the flies on the corpses in the street

      rippled when the fallen were merely

      wounded, and still fair game. Here,

      where everywhere was somewhere else,

      and the street signs point to Paris and the

      invisible city calls through its sarcophagus

      a thousand years, we move like ghosts.

      The light is not to be trusted. It has been so

      easily redirected. We orient through

      the night, following the wind, listening for a

      sudden noise, waiting for the taste of ashes.