Читать книгу Maps - John Freeman - Страница 9

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.