The coat of arms of Beirut: Berytus Nutrix Legum means Beirut, Mother of Laws. Commons image.
By Omar Sabbagh, in Beirut
There’s something quite special about us, you see.
Our money might be worthless but
the time-riled mettle of our resilience pays
and by the skill of our adaptations the nights we’re forced
to live become the workweek of our days,
children as we are of the flummoxing of the light.
Throw us into hellish waters, again and again,
into the labyrinth of our dark and pathless descent
and we come up breathing, asking for more,
because there is no more wound to suture
worse than the ones we’ve sewn before. We’ve seen it all.
And even when the residence of the God inside of us is
bombed, we build life again,
standing like a rock-forged building that can’t be razed, proud, strong, tall.
