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,