So we left Beirut and I He East to Baghdad and the rest of it I set out I the five or six miles to the last of the street lamps And hunkered in the curb side Holding out my In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of home traffic Success! An Mercedes 'dolmus ' The ubiquitous, Arab, shared drew up I out my pockets and shrugged at the driver " pas de l'argent " " Venez! " A soft voice from the back The driver wearily across and pushed open the back door I stooped to look at the two men there One besuited, bespectacled, moustached, irritated, distant, The other, the one who had spoken, Frail, fifty five-ish, bald, sallow, in a short sleeved pale blue shirt With one biro in the breast A clerk maybe, sunken in the seat "Venez!" He again, and smiled "Mais pas de l'argent" "Oui, Oui, d'accord, Venez!"
Are these the people that we bomb Are we so sure they us harm Is this our pleasure, or crime Is a mountain that we really want to climb The is hard, hard and long Put down that two by This man would never you from his door Oh George! Oh George! That Texas education must fucked you up when you were very small
He with a small arthritic motion of his hand Fingers like a child waving goodbye The driver put my old Hofner guitar in the with my rucksack And off we " Vous etes Francais, " " Non, " " Ah! " " Est-ce que parlais Anglais, Monsieur? " "Non, je regrette" And so on In talk between strangers, his French alien but correct halting but eager to please A lift, after all, is a moustache left us brusquely And some later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb Swung through a U-turn and stopped in a of dust I opened the and got out But my benefactor made no move to The driver my guitar and rucksack at my feet And away my thanks returned to the boot Only to reappear with a of alloy crutches Which he against the rear wing of the Mercedes. He reached into the car and my companion out Only one leg, the second trouser leg pinned beneath a vacant hip " Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca un honneur pour nous Si vous venez avec moi a la maison pour manger ma femme "
When I was 17 my mother, bless her heart, fulfilled my summer She me the keys to the car We motored down to Paris, with Dexedrine and booze Got bust in by the cops And fleeced in Naples by the But everyone was kind to us, we the English dudes Our dads had helped win the war When we all knew what we were for But now an Englishman is just a US stooge The bulldog is a snapping round the scoundrel's last refuge
"Ma femme", God! Monopod but not queer The taxi drove off us in the dim light of the swinging bulb No building in What the "Merci monsieur" "Bon, Venez!" His faced creased in pleasure, he set off in of me Swinging his leg between the crutches with agonising Up the dusty side road the darkness After an hour we'd gone maybe half a mile When on the right I out the low profile of a building He called out in Arabic to announce our And after some inside a lamp was lit And the changing angle of light in the wide crack under the the approach of someone within The door creaked and there, holding a biblical looking oil lamp a squat, moustached woman, stooped smiling up at us She stood aside to let us in and as she I saw the for her stoop She carried on her back a hump I nodded and smiled at her in greeting, fighting for control The gentleness between the one-legged man and his wife too much for me
Is gentleness too for us Should be filed along with empathy We feel for someone else's Every time a smart bomb does its and gets it wrong Someone else's child and equities in defence rise America, America, please hear us we call You got hip-hop, be-bop, and bustle You got Finch You got Jane You got of speech You got great beaches, and malls Don't let the might, the right, fuck it all up For you and the rest of the
talked excitedly She to take his crutches in routine of care He chiding, We a guest She embarrassed by her pas Took my and laid them gently in the corner "Du the?" We sat on meagre cushions in one of the single room The floor was earth packed hard and by one wall a platform six foot by four covered by a simple sheet, the bed The hunchback busied herself with small copper pots over an hearth And brought us tea, hot and And so to Flat, unleavened bread, + Cooked in an iron skillet over the open Then folded and dipped into the soft insides of female sea My hostess did not eat, I ate her She hear of nothing else, I was their guest And then she retired behind a And left the men to sit drinking thimbles of Arak Carefully poured from a small bottle a faded label Soon she reappeared, Carrying in her their pride and joy, their child. I'd seen a squint like that So severe as one eye looked out the other disappeared behind its nose
Not in my name, Tony, you great war you Terror is still terror, whosoever to frame the rules History's not by the vanquished or the damned Now we are Genghis Khan, Borghia, Son of Sam In 1961 they took this into their home I wonder what became of In the that was Lebanon If I could find them now, could I amends? How does the story
And so to bed, me is, not them Of course they slept on the floor a curtain I lay awake all night on their earthen bed Then came the dawn and then their quiet Careful not to wake the I in great pretence And took the proffered bowl of heated up and washed And sipped my in its tiny cup And then with much "merci-ing" and bowing and shaking of We left the to her chores And we men our way back to the crossroads The painful slowness of our accentuated by the brilliant morning light The dolmus duly My host gave me one crutch and leaning on the Shook my and smiled "Merci, monsieur," I " De " " And a votre femme, elle est tres gentille " up his other crutch He allowed himself to be into the back seat again "Bon voyage, monsieur," he And half as the taxi headed south towards the city I turned North, my over my shoulder And the first hot gust of Quickly the salt tears from my young cheeks.