Beirut, Lebanon, 1975—1990

The first time you see me, there will be gunfire.
Then sunlight breaks like glass

over unoccupied space.
So I am born from the mouth of a bullet hole,

and Lebanon’s burnt shell offerings
roll away.

Nothing grows from me except the dead
who knuckle through the street,

scraping through shrapnel,
the broken vertebrae of a country.

I carry their wounds for miles,
a thin, green sail:

the rigid trunk of a soldier,
branches sprouting where rifles once

rose, leaves shuddering
like white flags.

This stand of trees like a cesarean scar.
This dust-blown shade of division.