Poems
BAALBECK and the RUINS
Take yourself charioted to the city
Of the gods, a temple built on the plain;
Upheld by the girders of Time to remain,
A unique structure of eternal fame.
O, well for the thoughts that tradition stay,
Centuries back still signaling we find!
This heirloom of the Roman Empire left,
But a thought of a heart dead long ago.
Man has nothing more of Magic to show,
Having the lime stones of these massive walls,
Quarried a light travel, ere the eye caught,
A wonder, of the Seven, in the world made.
Time a count of years; here we count no more,
Hundreds of generations have passed, and still,
These pillars against time a time tall,
With the fingers of the wind a harp played.
These shattered walls a relic falling down,
To stay forever lying, sand on sand,
Till time with the feet of age passes by,
Leaving the gods, turning his face away.
Jawdat Haydar
LEBANON
I would that you were with me hence, sharing
This celestial view seen, unseen, before
Where Sannin eternally up staring
At the evening star glaring at the shore.
The deep is rising, the ships heading east
The green mountains capped with snow behind
Perhaps the eye of an artist possessed
May contain such a paradise in mind.
Come to me, darling, and look at the strand
The edge breaking foam lay miles apart
Amidst a galaxy topping the land
Looming a sky within heaven a heart.
Come, darling, to see what I see, and more
Stars above, stars below, moon in between
A brigade of cavalry charging the shore
Falling back on sand in glorious sheen.
O life! There's nothing more to enchant me
Than this vision of growing ecstasy
I feel dissolved and carried fancy-free
Where beauty and dreams meet in poesy.
That's the Lebanon the heart of the world
Where the cedars living for ages unknown
And the flag of liberty always unfurled
In a democracy without a throne.
Jawdat Haydar
Beirut
Where's Beirut of yesterday?
The City that was keeping big with fate
The precursor of religious pride in the east,
Where the origins of thought
Opened the purdah of mind
To teach the world
The true meaning of brotherhood and love,
Where is the Beirut of yesterday?
Where's Beirut. O where are the universities
The hospitals the skyscrapers the banks
The churches the mosques the domes the spires
The prosperous and busy streets?
What a painful memory is left today,
Of shadows standing walls in our grieving eyes,
Reduced to heaps of prehistoric mounds,
Inhabited by the whimpering owls at night
And far stretching skeins of eagles at sunrise,
Gyrating with hunting eyes overhead in flight.
Swooping down, enervated by the stench of the dead,
Turning tail and, up devouring our patience
And so we gaze at our calamity.
Waiting for the world to give us a hand
But the world was cock eyed, deaf and blind.
Never mind. history will record the crime
And timing time timely will avenge blood for blood,
Just to make the balance sheet right.
And I stand here on the highest mound
To spit now and every year once on the whole world,
To lubricate the tools of its mechanism;
Perhaps it will wheel right
To the palace of Justice
So that the people on earth
May enjoy their safety tomorrow.
August 12, 1982
Jawdat Haydar
Wash,
Wash,
Wash,
Wash, wash, wash,
Thy sabulous shores, O Sea!
In waves rising and ebbing to die
Like the countless hopes in me.
I have heard what I hear now, around
The shores of eternity,
The echo of a voice in the sound
Of the living age in me.
So deep that voice growing in my ears,
A song of life and regret
Of childhood, the gray hair and the years
I have forgot to forget.
I value the years, the wrinkles deep
On my brow, around my eyes
But O! for the thoughts that come and heap
On my heart, a world of sighs.
I would a day back to live again
A child with children at play
Without envy, without hate or pain
A child, full of cheer and gay.
Wash, wash, wash,
Thy old brownish shores, O Sea!
But the hopes dead and gone will never
Come again to life in me.
101 p77 Jawdat Haydar
Works Cited
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