Divide and Rule. Walid Bitar

DIVIDE

      copyright © Walid Bitar, 2012

      first edition

      

      Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also ­acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication.

      Bitar, Walid, 1961–

      Divide and rule / Walid Bitar.

      Poems.

      ISBN 978-1-55245-254-7

      I. Title.

      PS8553.I87755D58 2012 C811′.54 C2012-900236-4

      MISSION CREEP

      Big, small and medium-sized,

      fish whose schools I didn’t dynamite

      the first blockade or two, mission creep

      setting in now – flames children burst into,

      we elders sit around telling fairytales,

      sick of you as you are of us,

      patients concealing serious symptoms.

      The sun behind you, you could eclipse,

      if you were the moon. Words often fail

      at the last minute that arrives too early.

      Seems you’re currently at a loss for them;

      here they are. Listen how? Carefully,

      hunger-striker. Sing for my supper,

      and you prove the whatchamacallit

      would never land on your broad shoulders,

      as if it were a parakeet – bolt of lightning,

      more like, though that isn’t it either.

      I’m at a standstill, not up to scratch,

      dependent as pawns are on chessboards –

      rooks, kings, queens, the grandmaster’s

      THE GOOD REASON

      The stratagems of the enemy,

      subject of pre-war conversation,

      wiped smiles off his and our faces

      when reality became unspeakable.

      I loved him once – may he rest assured

      in a crypt I spent the morning sealing.

      I awoke feeling misunderstood,

      therefore decided I’d clear my throat,

      carve in stone maxims inchoate

      when I was in a better position

      to mutter something, mean nothing by it.

      Now I’m forced to act after I speak

      in our circle of mandarins,

      some intimating they need a bit extra

      to distinguish them from their closest friends

      on whom they turn, barbarism feigned.

      How did we lose the shared sense of humour

      claimed later by each as his own?

      There are various versions of events,

      the solution conflating them all

      before they multiply, the gossip

      in both my ears, and out both others.

      The good reason: I hired a double

      the research shows helps a man grow,

      grasping though I am for ideals

      formerly held at a lesser distance.

      Almost as easy wrestling free

      as raising arms high in surrender,

      regaling audiences, their feet of clay

      not any archetypal model’s,

      so I must sculpt them. Rather painful –

      mission accomplished with an iron fist.

      THE HUNDRED-METRE HURDLES

      Hypnotize me, an emancipated

      slave compromised by tacit acceptance

      of the status quo – may I flow faster

      than flash-flood water down the drains

      into the sea. Doesn’t look like rain,

      background of your still life you’re angry

      I sell as a paint-by-numbers set,

      or a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

      Didn’t stick my leg out – you tripped

      single-handedly after a few,

      a very few, too many. Self-hatred’s

      career-threatening. There’s much I owe

      you for diverting unbearable pressure.

      Wait until you regain consciousness

      from a beating I’ll resume administering

      and, in the meantime, lick my own wounds,

      blisters I prick after state-sponsored walking –

      transliterated, the names of athletes

      caught clearing hurdles, or knocking them over.

      Wouldn’t underestimate this rabble

      if I were their coach. I’m of their number,

      must compete in our teeming slum.

      Trash-talking beggars I grant pardons.

      Something I wouldn’t call a conscience

      serves me, like Rottweiler or seneschal.

      Since I can’t afford either, the sound

      of my thinking out loud suffices.

      Laugh at it – it becomes the laughter.

      SOUND BARRIER

      Publically, you claim you’re an ocean

      I am surviving in as marine life,

      without provoking a rival’s claque,

      its main body on a beach frying,

      predictable before the sun descends

      to an underworld we’re above at war.

      I’d rather fight the living. The dead

      have had too much time to mull things over,

      argue their questions precede statements

      I issue, turning my words into answers,

      though I speak first – there’s no respect

      for simple chronology from the bastards,

      their testes crated, and ours in states

      required by the counter-revolution,

      our ex-employer preaching from the choir,

      singing never his primary strength,

      glorious,