‘I have never known such a thing – God’s habit of war’: Poems on love and grief in turbulent times

God’s Habit of War

There are wars that never stop.
It becomes a habit in many tongues, many languages.
In our desert houses, there are no windows,
sunlight moves from room to room
like orphaned children running with bleeding wounds,
still laughing together.
Everyone lives happily here –
it becomes a habit.

She loves my curly silver hair
washes it with orange oil as a holy ritual.
She keeps doing it again and again.
My body shivers; it pleases me and also scares.
I know she is possessed by my happiness –
it becomes her habit.

My memory burns –
the graves of my brothers and sisters
scattered like vanilla flowers,
squirrels licking them as beads of prayer.
I have never known such a thing – God’s habit of war.

Love in Beirut

the sun quivers with unfulfilled desire –
charred trucks, buses, cars
piled upon each other at the gas station;
streets still full of life, houses dressed in Hawaiian daffodils,
shops selling marinated fossils of our happiness,
neighbors in masks
gathering minced debris falling from the sky;
we meet in the corner of a tunnel bookshop;
her lips smell of smoky roasted eggplant,
her dark olive breasts swelling with terror;
slowly she parts her green thighs –
we make love in grudging daylight –
I raise my head:
a mist of blood and blueberries on the window;
good lovers never speak ill of poets and prophets.

Gulliver’s Land

I always keep a map in my pocket –
on trains, on buses, even while cycling in the park.
Often I buy fruits at the supermarket
only after checking the map,
as though pineapples or plums came from Gulliver’s land,
Like an...

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