The Friday Poem on 12/07/2024
It’s hard to write about war without coming across as trite or hackneyed, but Mark Fiddes pulls it off in this ambitious, insistent poem. He approaches his subject sideways, and the result is impressionistic and slightly surreal. Precise details give us a real sense of authenticity, and Hammad, the waiter at the café where the narrator takes his morning coffee, adds a human touch. It’s political, it’s serious, and it has reach, but it also manages to land gently. Some poem!
Beige
Some cities are beige in unexpected ways.
Hotel showers spit grit and lizards.
In tailored ecru and fawn, the policemen
vogue under flyovers with speed guns.
Skips fill with scrap and hollow cats.
Sand drifts behind chained embassy gates.
Flags inside are folded for another go
when this state of mild panic passes over.
At night, cars howl around the ring road
like animals in the last circus on Earth.
The gas tank sedatives are wearing off.
Check points have popped up at the exits.
Each morning, Hammad makes my coffee
with cardamom and a sprig of mint
in a glass on the same rickety corner table
where taxi drivers stop by for a smoke.
Barbers recontest last night’s football.
We haven’t seen a drop of rain since Eid.
Watch how some cities can turn to powder
at the touch of a button.
Over the border, a reporter files the news
rebranded for unbelievers as BBC Verified.
She calls a cloud that is beige a ‘light haze’
rather than a choking shroud
suspending particulates of rubble,
flesh, shoes, screams, curtains, melamine
glass, prayers, comic books, kisses, bone,
birthdays, lullabies and photographs.
A light haze like a summer day in England
with little more than cricket breaking out
and a pause in hostilities by the boundary
for tea and sandwiches.
A light haze that has jagged on raw
jawed ruins beyond the pity of even
wind and rain. Beyond stalled
trucks of food and aid.
A light haze for a late December day
some still call the Feast of the Innocents
when a different Galilee Division
stole into Bethlehem.
‘Innocent’ is triggering language
to use at this time, says the press officer.
That nobody believes reports anymore
without independent corroboration.
That anyone can cross the border south
at any time if they are without blame,
in possession of the correct paperwork
and unconnected to any suspects.
Hammad’s teaching me a little Arabic.
On my till receipt, he writes نفس.
‘Nafas’ meaning breath, or sigh, or soul,
or carnal desire, or merely an instant.
It will all depend on where you live.
