A TRIBUTE TO BEIRUT
BY DIANA BOUDARGHAM TANNOURY
City of Wells, Bronze Age City
Waters flow beneath you, thousands of years surround you
Embraced by the Land of Canaan
White the Lebanon is, white its snowy peaks
Byblos, its first inhabited city;
The Canaanites settled you
The Phoenicians, their descendants, journeyed around you
Founders of colonies in Crete, Cyprus, Carthage and Cadiz
Enriching you with trade around the seas
Bejeweling you with the first alphabet
Mother of future written languages
Through civilizations, you were engulfed by the Egyptians
Defeated by the Assyrians and Babylonians
Invaded by the Persians, absorbed by the Greeks, Romans and Byzantines
Ruled by the Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans
Yet your essence remained across the times;
Destroyed and rebuilt in Hellenistic Antiquity,
Laodicea, you were renamed
On Alexander the Great, the ancient Phoenician God Baal shed his light
And the old ruins of his temple became Heliopolis,
City of the Sun
Under the Romans, you were Berytus
Tyche, the Goddess of Fortune enshrined your coins
Your law school shone in all its glory
The temples of Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus rose to their might
With the Byzantines, you embraced Christianity
Your temples, places of worship they became
Until the ground shook with so grand a quake
It destroyed all in its wake
Under the Arabs, you embraced Islam
Greek books translated into Arabic
Your temples were forts against the Crusaders,
between both religions, caught
In the hands of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, John of Ibelin
The old Lord of Beirut, rebuilt you after the battle with Saladin
Later, you were taken by the Mamluks and ruled by the Ottomans
Here our journeys part, my City of Wells, to your resilience I bow
My ancestors, with open arms you welcomed
Thousands of years passed away and true to your land
YOU REMAINED.