A salute to Jacques Berque

I imagine a poet
in Beirut, sister to Anatolia, friend of Athens,
a poet who stands with his friend Jacques Berque at the gate of the sea
leaning on his cane
imagining that his voice is a tambourine,
that the tambourine is broken in his throat,
that his throat is a fire named God.

I imagine a poet
into whose innards history rains,
into his words and between his feet,
and who rains blood that some carry as if a banner made of sky.

Goddess of doubt, you who were born in the lap of our mother the sea,
why do you not announce this poet and his friend?

Say what you do not see,
what turns time on its back,
what holds the wind standing on tiptoe,
what pours the ashes of silence on the flames of speech
improvised by the world's prose.

Announce also the inflamed eyelashes
the severed hands
the withered days
and whether the lantern is a throat or a head
and how we can distinguish today between an insect and a flower?

And say is there a means now
to colonize the clouds
and say
how this Mediterranean still needs
to re-emerge from the childhood of the alphabet.

Alphabet, how brave they are these cicadas that inhabit your
harvest,
how ferocious these angels that lie in the beds of your forgetfulness!

René Char
where is the storm then,
and why is poetry still an ally of the waves
and why has the sky left nothing of our history
except statues whose genitals have been lopped?

The poet leaning on his stick
standing at the gate of the sea, with his friend

Jacques Breque
whispers to his friend, or perhaps to the waves:
‘If there is a sky, it is migration'
and his friend replies, also whispering,
‘No
the miracle is not above
it is soil sleeping among the underclothes of the grass.'

What time is it now? I don't know.

Except that the spidery arms of the clock spin. Two flies circle
and buzz above, or three.

Poet, write a poem, and describe the scene
adding the wall upon which you were hung and the curtain
half torn under the lamp and the black window.

Do not forget to allude to Modernism so that you may be counted
among the pioneers, but before that, don't forget to describe the
scene
the old shoe resting alone under the clock as if
waiting for his owner's return, and beware of the big issues:

Poetry
must capture - not the things - but their crumbs.

And let you words rise to their covenant.

Owah!

The moon has fallen sad asleep
on his chair covered with clouds.
And the poet leaning on his stick accompanied
by his friend Jacques Berque
counted the moths that drowned in the clamour of flames
on that night,
the flames of candles lit
by children by the sea
who spend the night with foam
hunting the waves.

And evening in Beirut
was pining like a beggar soliciting in space
brought down to his knees
resting on his cheek on Ulysses' cheek.

Do we think we are still alive by the shore of the Mediterranean,
have we become herders of the stars?

A rose carries the whole of night in her sleeves
leans on Beirut's chest
and gives her waist to the air's forearm
while life embraces her hatchlings
placing her feet on the staircase of the future.

Is this really the world?

Shall I grieve? Shall I hope?

I prefer to sing.

-Adonis