We seem so close to an agreement with Lebanon about gas – and it is clear we would all benefit somehow from a deal.  For me, the benefit would be that I’d be able to see Beirut.

I once had a friend in Beirut.  In the 80’s I wrote poems about him.  I don’t know if I ever published this:

Friend and Foe

(June 10-12, 1982)

Skyhawks fly over my city
on their way to bomb yours.
We are awakened by the noise
and I fall asleep restlessly
dreaming of you and your daughters.

“If anything happens to my girls,
I hold you personally responsible.”
April 25. Israel is bombing Beirut.
You and I stick to wine with our
lamb casserole in Cyprus
and discuss politics.

Spinning the dial now from BBC
to the Israel Army Channel
I don’t know what to believe.
The thin voice of an 18-year-old soldier
telling how a Lebanese
kissed him when he jumped out
of his tank, is muddled with the British
accents of the newsmen estimating
half a million homeless
in southern Lebanon.

Minutes after the cease-fire in Beirut
CBS photographs antiaircraft fire
from a small apartment building.
(Is that where you live? Then
who lives with you?) The Skyhawks
go down on the city again.

Friend! My husband is in civil defence
and my sons are too small for the army. You
have daughters and are old and alcoholic.
We can’t fight this war.
But both of us are in it
and responsible.