Translated from the Lebanese
In memory of Patriarch Elias Hoayek
Who never lost hope in God or in Lebanon

Now amongst the death rattles
And the heart-rendering torment
The mountain spoke
In a sepulchral voice:

When I listen profoundly to myself,
When I hear this stranger
Who shudders in my entrails;

When for a moment I forget
The politics and the scoundrels
The grimacing eunuchs,

The women who were groping for me,
The lusting who jeered at me,
And all the practical people,
These paralytic shopkeepers
Who dull-like live;

When I see nothing more of the others,
When I no longer see good apostles,
Who feed and who wallow
Who bloom and who get fat
In dullness and villainy,
Who swagger in deception
And who lick themselves with their saliva,
Gargling in their stains,
And who honor themselves
And decorate themselves
With their vomit;

When I forget this wax paper album that stinks,
This catalogue of satiated arrogance,
This codex of factories,
Of banks, of kitchens,
Of salons, of latrines,
Of clubs and of sewers;

This inflexible bible of the streets and the mud,
This gospel, forgive me, Jesus!
This gospel of jackals and wolves
Camouflaged as sheep
And hyenas who pretend to be
Shepherds with gentle eyes;

This infamous apocalypse of money;
These annals of orgies;
This dictionary of cannibals,
Without a memory or remorse;

This book of gold
Of obliterated civil servants,
Of irreclaimable mercenaries
Of exasperated cannibals,
Of desperate carrion-beetles
And wily monkeys;

This breviary of our suffering,
This inventory of our progress,
This missal of death,

Where we crush paste, and ruthlessly stamp,
Like dried leaves,
The new faith
Of my youth,
Faith
My only joy
The flowers of my suffering,
And the fruit of hope,
In the worst torment;

When the accident stays away,
With the temporary, with the possible,
And leaves me be;
When I listen to myself,
When I listen to my blood,
When I only listen to myself,
Then, I hear:'

But from where do they come?
From which laws,
From which chaos,
From which indelible downfall,
From which bad tempers
From which dark inebriations?

I hear:

Tears falling on the roads,
And bare feet
Bleeding, drop by drop
Behind the hooves
Of the mules

Long shouts invisible in the heavy storms
And the calls of woman that are assassinated
Or who take their pleasure with bizarre beasts,
Or else who sing
With the angels;

Gnashing of teeth
Somber smiles,
Engulfed church bells
Atrocious litanies
Never-ending complaints
Continents drifting, in the gloom,

And the haggard laughter
Of a virgin
Assaulted,
And her smothering
Later,
After the orgy and the feast,
When drowned in the ocean;

And I hear the drunkenness in the rotten skulls,
I hear the liveliness of full stomachs,
And the beatitude of repleted digestion.

Riddles in the mouth, mysteries in the flanks,
I hear rumblings and pantings

And I hear the caresses of obese bellies,
And I hear the tenderness on smoldering navels;
And I hear the flattering, under the august buttocks,
Humiliation

I hear words of love and obscenities,
In the intentions;

I hear the angelus and the wickedness,
In the handshakes;

I hear in the promises
Poems, blasphemy,
Curses,
Requiems;

Plague- ridden venom and iniquities,
In the acclamations;

I hear in the sermons,
Fermenting bitterness of the sinister goals
I hear in the treaties
Sumptuous salvos, hideous fanfare

Machine gunshots,
And knife stabs;

And I hear in the pacts
Under the arches of laurel trees,
Crimson scaffolds
Built by thousands;

I hear fear and dumbfoundedness
Strangling trust;
Wreathes of flowers

And grave diggers' shovels
Burying innocence;
And loyalty sinking in the vaults

And I hear the white beak
Of a yellow chick through a white egg,
And I hear it,
Thin and trembling,
Fearfully,
Go back inside;

I hear the heart breaking,
I hear the skin growing pale
And I hear the sweat
Of this choir boy,
Who in the shadow of a church,
From evening till morning,
Rips and sodomizes
A barbarous destiny;

And I hear increasing
To the point of perishing
On the terrorized man,
In the modest virgin

A bestiality
That even the wild boars, in the antique grottos, ignored.

I hear the iniquitous and sardonic sound

Of the gold that passes from hand to hand,
With which one buys
Friends, clients,
Pontiffs, poets
And with which one sells
His brother, his father, his mother and children;
With which one buys face paint and carpets,
Silk stockings, prostitutes,
With which one buys the judge and the jury,
Conscience and spirit,
And with which one sells his soul and his country
And all of mankind.

Tocsins in houses that are burning
Horizons retreating
Partitions jostling
Reign of the kingdom of debauchery
In the hurling hamlets
In the decomposed towns,
In the villages that gesticulate
And which flee in confusion

Outcries of a terrified people,
With staring eyes
Who understand nothing more
Crooked barking of dogs
Pools of blood;

Beheaded busts
Of which we hear jumping,
Whose heads we hear thumping
On all sides,
And whose heavy feet
All of a sudden are spirited away
In the moving trenches;

And I hear exploding
Disgusted throats
And Adam's apples;

And I hear joined hands
Dumb prayers,
Eyes lost in the clouds,

And insults
And sneering;

And I hear crackling

The dried-out buds,
Like small lead shots;
I hear smoking, towards the crazed storm,
Peeled foliage,
Cursed boughs,
And the disheveled plumage
Of the destroyed nests

Toppled churches,
Smashed terraces,
Piled-up cadavers,
And broken crucifixes
On all the departed;

Fatal ebb
Of a sand bank
Dreadful
On this quicksand!

And I hear, under the marble,
The thousand arms of the dead,
In a supreme effort,

To hang on to the roots and shake the trees;

And I hear the forests
And the heaped up columns
Break away from the earth
And fly in the wind;

And then I hear the sound,
Very finely strident,
Like a voice from purgatory,
Which makes the seeping, oozing of a ray of light an illusion

In the black of night
And in Nothingness

And I hear in the fields,
The wheat on the sheaves
Which are ashamed to grow,
Which have no more patience,
Which have no more abundance,
Which have only silence
And sterility
And then I hear
Time!

I hear Time
On all these ruins,
Like the catch of a guillotine
Like a guilty verdict;

Like cataracts
Fine dust,
Like masses of shadows,
Like bare walls and like ruins,
In the heart of our acts;

Like a gaping river,
Like black torrents
That carry disasters
And the overflowings
Where old rags
Clash with
Fragments of stars
Giant tree trunks,
Vague forms
Jaws, ciboriums,
The blues of the sky, green algae,
Pure throats,
And blocks of diamonds;

And then I hear time,
On the dreary countryside,
Like a great settling
After the landslide, after the collapse
Of the most beautiful mountains
Where the highest feelings
Had taken refuge.

I hear time come
From above the stars
Like a boat at full sail;

Like dawn in the heart of God
Like a generous gift
Like an unexpected pardon
That lavishes and recreates
New beginnings;

Like a solstice
In the firmament,
That brings order and justice back
To Lebanon….