In Memory

The first thing that I will remember of you

is that you described an intellectually deficient

*man (*Homo sapiens)

as one who, when put with his ideas into an enema, could easily fit into

a matchbox .

The second is that someone, once in foolishness, asked you if,

having had all your previous wishes, you would desire

a dinner with Shakespeare, and you responded (I search to quote correctly)

“…the only reason I want to meet Shakespeare, or might even want to,

is ‘cause I can meet him, anytime, because he is immortal in the works

he’s left behind. If you’ve read those, meeting the author would almost

certainly be a disappointment…”

And the third memory,

because men such as I must have some conclusion, I say to you,

that most times when I recall your face I think of a day in Lebanon,

in the year of our imagined Lord Two Thousand and Nine,

when you were beaten by fascist thugs adhering

to the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party.

You had defaced the swastikas that adorned neighborhoods

in the segments of Beirut. You refused to fight against them while your friends

pulled you away from their fists and boots

and you said, “No, no, I will not fight.”

I remember you that way:

battered, brilliant, the man

who taught me how to look at Orwell,

to be fearless in the faces of those that wish to kill you.

You taught me to tell them to bring the rats.

You taught me to tell them that they could kill a heart but not a memory.

Your mother named you Christopher, perhaps after a saint killed in Lycia.

You must have been bleeding on those streets on that day. The newspapers,

they spoke of six men that attacked you; their boots, their heels, their fists.

I can see you in a room in your hotel

with the bruises rising up like a loaf of bread

and a bottle of contraband whiskey in your hand.

If it was your moment then or now,

let me murder the timekeeper.

Let God raise a shield against me

and be torn into pieces.

__________

for C.H.