By Omar Sabbagh, in Beirut
If there was a man with a due and special brief
who died in utter pain today, the last drop of working sap
in a dried-out world, of white and green and the world’s relief –
where might we clock and read his ember of hope
today, and where the hanged man’s rope
building-at its knot of paradox and glory?
All things we thought we knew for certain
are leaving home today, squandered like riven exiles
entering the space and beat of a more feral music
to dance to, the moving body of the things we knew filled
with gluts of bile – the orthodox the heretic,
and this mint of hellish dread the down-wing of the heaven-sent.
What might we celebrate today of all days,
when debris is the only signature of wholeness or redemption?
