Words That Burn

 

Staring up into the tank’s belly lit

by a bare bulb hanging down off

the exhaust, a mechanic’s hands are up

inside the dark metallic innards doing something

that looks personal, private. This tank is nothing

like the ones the Americans deploy.

Those have uranium piercing shells that could melt

right through this tank’s armor and set off

the ammo box: nothing can withstand the American tanks.

 

The barrel’s called a cannon. The machine guns they call

deterrents. The tank is old, small, about the size

of a horse and cart. The armor plate shines green

under the streetlight. The sprockets, almost rusted out.

Somebody forgot to grease the nipples. The timing belt is nicked

and worn. The spare parts from France don’t fit. This wire

crossed with this wire makes a catastrophic fire.

Be careful how you route it. .20 caliber ammo

goes in the hatch behind the armor plate.

 

The mechanic on his back in the dirt,

cursing in Arabic, sounds like he’s cursing

in a good-natured way: who was the fucking moron

who did the maintenance on this thing?

This tank, this tank, he should push it off

a cliff into the sea so that it could bob for

half an hour before sinking under the Pigeon Rocks

where all the lovers gather in the shadows

near that little bar, lit by a generator, that serves arak

 

and warm beer to soldiers hanging out on the Corniche:

mainly conscripts from down south, whose orange groves

rot because nobody can pick the oranges: try to pick

an orange and a cluster bomb lodged in leaves

comes tumbling into your basket. What weight oil

did this cocksucker use, anyway? And this engine,

it’s gonna blow. Beat up tanks and sandbags,

that’s all this army is, old sparkplugs that get fouled

so that you have to file the gaps over and over.

 

He stares up in that live, minute, completely

concentrated way of scrutinizing something

or someone you thought you understood:

the tank’s underbody completely covers his body

so they look like they’re embracing when he reaches up

inside it, his needle nose pliers crimping, twisting,

pulling down hard. There, you see that, it’s all corroded.

The cannon jutting out looks both threatening

and vulnerable as if the tank’s firepower

 

were dependent on that wire. He runs two fingers

up and down it, then feels where rust,

mixed into an oily paste, shines like bloody flux

that he gently dips his finger in, sniffs and tastes.

Clanging back his tapping on the armor plate,

as he listens to her talking on his back in the dirt, screwing in

the spare parts, the tank says what tanks always say,

Fix me, oil me, grease me, make it fit,

confirming what he knows about the French.