For Jihan
The river is achromatic,
with a few pencil dots of white,
and the trees partly obscure
the ancient buildings of Antioch
Do you see this is a view
which is for the most part two
dimensional unlike, how
I see you and feel now?
While a camel caravan crosses
the old bridge over Orontes
and one of the lead drivers
turns to look at the camera,
The stock image of the colonialist,
how the Orient was imagined.
Below in another old photo
also taken by Sport of Beirut,
A lone man walks to Aleppo
along the ancient Roman road.
The journey into the interior,
in the guise of something spiritual,
He has taken the clothes of the Other
to be closer to you, to be influential.
What he is thinking is not known
but it is in colour, like your
Mornings and their sunrises,
and I want to write it down.
What this man can see and know
because even at its most banal
Whether to do with food or money,
each image and word is history
And each touch with his sunburnt
hand or each scent of the sacred
Laurel is in itself a private annal,
to eat the fruit of the 1930's.
Is to taste the ancient world
to live in the great Citadel
And even if it is only the memory
of an argument with a friend
His words and sounds will correspond
with those of the times now gone,
And in the sky he can see the eagle
that brought the flesh of victims.
We meet only in language
and yet it is more than his back turned
Now the lonely man descends to myth,
"while I love you", stays like a truth
a mountain in this imagined landscape
where we will go and where we'll stay.
They found at the foot of Mount Silpius
the new city and territory of Antioch.
And I hope you find in this poetic
outburst, the meaning of what is "us".
Stephen Pain (this afternoon 15:29 25/08/99)
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