Elegy for Lebanon

Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that
paid
for the bombs and the planes and the tanks
that they used to massacre your family
-June Jordan

Elegy for Lebanon

Where can I begin, when the wars have no end?
No goal save destruction, no limits, defense?

Waking’s a nightmare, dreams harder than life
Death stalks the daylight, even the night’s fenced

The roses weep blood, where has kindness gone?
Love’s leaves fallen, friends scattered to the winds

Look, is that a cloud over the valleys?
Will its raindrops quench hungry fire’s fiends?

No, this garlic haze rains pebbles of flame,
spectral tentacles lick cedars, burn skin

These phosphors of white, a hellish luban,
bleach creeping north through the hills of Lubnan

As if to erase poems in the earth
lines plowed out in lives, graves and groves of verse

Dear doves in the trees, ravens on the peaks,
fly cross the borders, fly back through the weeks

And back to those times when lives still were lives
or was that a lie, half-forgotten dream?

Fly over yellow—lines, press, and the shrouds
sprouting like daisies on hills in the South

Fly, find and bring back an olive twig’s peace
Plant it, in its shade, spread out its gold feast

Will lambs ever lie with ravenous beasts,
who gnaw on life and excrete rubble heaps?

to fertilize fields of future dead wheat?
what then, when what’s been sown now will be reaped?

How many medics? How many unseen
mothers clutch at hearts, bursting at the seams?

How many children, pockets stuffed with dreams?
Do they all flow into the shimmering sea?

Where does all that love go? That light in the eyes?
What seas can receive all of these spilt lives?

What kind of life needs so many to die?
Every day, all around, and cannot fathom why?

Whatever you do to the least of these
is what you’ve done to me, hungry, thirsty

While we’re all made in the image of He
Who has no image, save everything

So why pound the cross, the temples, and mosques,
while more human temples desecrating?

Dear Nabi Ayyub has suffered enough
these hills and this sky, these world-weary eyes

Gush springs from below, bring rain from above
drown sorrow’s ark, wash off disease’s blight

Perhaps then we’ll find those waters of life
regrown in the glow of Khidr’s green light

Who knows what the spheres’ spinning will bring ‘round?
Perhaps air will swell with music’s sweet sounds

Perhaps the church bells and adhan at dawn
will ring out in harmony with the birdsongs…

Who knows if we will, although we know how,
We pray for such days always, but for now…

I’ve folded up grief, stuffed it in this case,
locked up, awaiting the free hands of Fate

I wait wrapped in pain, so where can I start?
Trapped under this sky, more ruined than my heart

My heart on these tears’ stream to you I send
with prayers and love’s hope to hold you again

When will these tears and war’s exile end?
When will you return and see us, my friend?

صلوات الله وسلامه		على ماحي الضّلال وكلِّ عسوف

وآله و صحبه ومن		يشهد بالحقّ بالعدل موصوف

God water your lands, and make firm your roots
‘till mountains melt, float on the Day of Truth.

-Oludamini
5 Dhu’l Qa‘da
Charlottesville, Virginia

1.  June Jordan, “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48757/apologies-to-all-the-people-in-lebanon
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2. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/4/22/bad-optics-israel-jails-soldiers-who-smashed-jesus-statue-in-lebanon
   
   https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2026-04-23/ty-article-opinion/israel-cares-more-about-a-statue-of-jesus-than-about-living-palestinians/0000019d-b6d3-ded5-abdd-b6fbec1e0000
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Feature image: Photo by Mehmet Talha Onuk on Unsplash