POEM OF THE WEEK

Beirut captured the world’s attention last August, when explosive chemicals stored at a port caused a blast that killed hundreds, injured thousands and left an estimated 300,000 homeless. But the city has been going through another kind of explosion since 2019, one that is still unfolding. Now in their 19th month, the protests against the government’s inept handling of Lebanon’s financial crisis reached a peak in January 2020. In what locals called “the week of rage”, the “darak” (police) used rubber bullets against hundreds of protestors, who defended themselves from tear gas with makeshift masks and goggles.

This week’s poem finds a moment of calm at the heart of that storm. Lisa Luxx, a young poet of British-Syrian heritage, lives in Beirut. This poem from her first collection Fetch Your Mother’s Heart is rich with Lebanon’s language and cuisine, from “warak einab” (stuffed grape leaves) and “snayniyeh” (a boiled wheat dessert) to the traditional invitation to eat, “sahteyn” (“twice your health”).

It may paint a warm domestic scene, but the danger and violence outside are never quite absent from the poet’s mind. A laugh can’t conceal the limp from a rubber-bullet wound. Luxx’s description of washing coriander, meanwhile, seems to recall the water cannons used to pin down protestors on their way to Martyr’s Square: “Water hits… pinning each/ small petal down against my flesh.” The poem’s intimate kitchen scene stands in for all the ordinary, unnoticed moments of human connection, as life carries on in a city on fire. Tristram Fane Saunders