June Jordan wrote Apologies to All the People in Lebanon and 4.2 decades later there are three thousand reasons it remains necessary. A man on the radio in Beirut said he donated his eye because if his countrymen have been blinded what is there to see; Khaliifah gave thanks to Allah as the world wept Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un– Indeed, we belong to Allah, and indeed, to Him we return. June Jordan wrote apologizing to all the people in Lebanon and from heaven she is still apologizing. I imagine she welcomed Khaliifah with a warm embrace The two cloaked in the kind of integrity that the afterlife was made to reward An integrity undeterred A martyr is not a logo and certainly not an excuse. I have pitied myself for far less– Misunderstanding displacement discontent and its foolishness– Microcosms of injustice I know to be sinister and that now feel silly all the same Who am I to beckon death Reading love poems from a ghost
Apologies to All the People in Lebanon by June Jordan (1982) I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? They said you shot the London Ambassador and when that wasn’t true they said so what They said you shelled their northern villages and when U.N. forces reported that was not true because your side of the cease-fire was holding since more than a year before they said so what They said they wanted simply to carve a 25 mile buffer zone and then they ravaged your water supplies your electricity your hospitals your schools your highways and byways all the way north to Beirut because they said this was their quest for peace They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys whose bodies swelled purple and black into twice the original size and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby and then they said this was brilliant military accomplishment and this was done they said in the name of self-defense they said that is the noblest concept of mankind isn’t that obvious? They said something about never again and then they made close to one million human beings homeless in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed 40,000 of your men and your women and your children But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? They said they were victims. They said you were Arabs. They called your apartments and gardens guerrilla strongholds. They called the screaming devastation that they created the rubble. Then they told you to leave, didn’t they? Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped from their hotshot fighter jets? They told you to go. One hundred and thirty-five thousand Palestinians in Beirut and why didn’t you take the hint? Go! There was the Mediterranean: You could walk into the water and stay there. What was the problem? I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks that they used to massacre your family But I am not an evil person The people of my country aren’t so bad You can expect but so much from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch American TV You see my point; I’m sorry. I really am sorry.
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