Etel Adnan. “The Beirut-Hell Express” (1970/1986)
…but there are different treatises
always taken again as a heritage
in which, like tired continents, great
figures closed into their insanity have sunk…
--Malek Alloula, “Villes,” Algiers ‘68
The human race is going to the cemetery [1]
in great upheavals
two horses reciting MAO
my uneasiness
to be heroic
bread and roses
flowers and flames
lived in the universe of
JAZZ Mingus's bass
shocks with no return
what to do with wonder if not
some pain the head one California
night the road and black
trees against which are rubbing
their faces two men in waiting...
taxi drivers urinate standing
on the Damascus-Beirut-Damascus
road
inglorious itinerary
I inhabit the tiniest country
in an expanding universe
I love the women who are veiled
like my aunt used to be
and those who go naked
at the American crossroads where
drugs are growing: they are
crabs lying on the back of
starfish in the sea
I love the men who cover their
head and show but one eye
not the blind one but the one
which looks inside.
From two thousand years of History I
keep but JAZZ
because it is Black. I banished
colors and dried up the sea
here you only eat sand…
we all are torturers
one shadowless morning
one morning!
Don't you know that I live in San Rafael with San Quentin for neighbor
a nightmare on which the sun
sets in tears
the Bay at its feet and
the moon… it's always she
rising above the hair
of a woman four times suicidal
and an island a single one
Angel Island uninhabited
and in the Prison
George Jackson and Sirhan Sirhan
a cold nail
enters the skin
20,000 dead in Amman
20,000 shining nails around the head
of the King
20,000 ghosts heavy weights stinking
the air crime the autumn of the criminal.
The flag of prophecy [2] floats on
the ships
Fire! let the hurricane enter
the holes and like a boiling river
carry away the angels stricken with fear
on the summits of the Sannine!
move on people full of slime
let your lemonades go to the sea
let your casino crumble
let your race horses carry their owners
to those undergrounds where Babylon
used to cook its poisons
liberation like a spring still
under the ground is growing what
seems to be hands open at the level
of the soil there is no grass on this earth.
My father was Ouranos
and my mother Queen Zenobia
I am the initial Fish
rejected on the beach
but determined to live.
Do you know imbeciles that Rimbaud
was among us a century ago
from Beirut to Aden-Arabia
and that Fouad Gabriel Naffah the poet
I repeat Fouad Gabriel Naffah
is among us
crucified by your thickness
burned with nitrogen
yes people of Beirut go on
snoring let nitrate burn
these pine-tree forests where
you throw your garbage your paper towels
the country is the dumpsite
for the foreign merchandise
that everyone refuses
Tammouz's country is an open sore
his degenerate descendants
have their shoes shined
by the hands of a herd of beggars
you borrowed your masks
from the pigs and the crows
there have been three earthquakes
in the Third century
destroying three times Beirut
and a fourth one is coming!
the world is being born
the people are coming
the people are coming
the eagle has carried the message
to the tribe
the camel has carried the message
to the tribe
the shark has carried the message[3]
to the tribe
from everywhere in the world they are
coming.
The Revolution is coming…
In New York I say the hell with America
In Moscow I say the hell with Stalin
In Rabat I say the hell with
hello the beggar
hello to the fedai
hello to Mohammad the visionary
hello to the prisoner
In the evening when darkness moves
as slow as mud
I watch the prostitutes
it is forbidden that women
think
I watch our servants
it is forbidden that women go
to sleep
I watch our brides
going to bed alone
it is forbidden that women
lie as gazelles
on the infinite fields of the Arabian plains
On the fields
on the Arabian plains
on the face of the desert
on the streets of our
bitch-in-heat cities
they are only
the maimed
and governments with no end
crime barks higher than
hyenas
BABYLON BABYLON
I announce our resurrections
and your death.
to the psychic conquest
and then to prophecy
and from the prophecy to the divine
the divine is the people-who-suffer
Comrade Dostoevsky
is in Beirut he stays
at the Orient-Prince Hotel, he
eats at the Horseshoe cafe
he swims—you're not kidding—
at the St. George
[5]he yawns--imagine that!—at the A.U.B.
and for his redemption he counts
the typographical errors of the
daily an-Nahar
Comrade Dostoevsky
enjoys but the Koran
understands but compassion
Comrade Dostoevsky
is arrested by the Security Service
and he laughs laughs and his laughter
is broadcast on the radios of
the whole world
I caught it on channel 14
in California
Oh how I would like to break the sky
and provoke the lightning
bring down the deluge on this
town!
Calmly we have prostituted
even the plants Vulture-faced
sorrow is crying
while the boat refuses to leave
In the middle of History
In the heart of the hexagon [6]
at the leverage point of the
building
at the meeting spot
of honor
lives and dies
Gamal Abdel Nasser
and his grave witnesses its
first miracle
I am going to talk to you
about the moslem saints: and the naked
girl lying by our dead
It is in Jabal Amman
that you should look for resurrection
it is in the Wahdat Camp [7]
that you should look for spring
it is on the bones of Abou Sliman
that you should write koranic
verses
City more unreal than the wind
although pregnant with the sins of
the world
it is in your belly that foreigners
exercise the alchemy of treason
I love the October breeze
the red skies which foretell
the coming wars
above the sea
acetylene lamps light
the fishermen and the
boats
Hamra Street: our nerves shrink at this name
blood becomes white the pedestrian
becomes a ghost the Lebanese pound
exudes a stench
and I fall on my knees
in front of the children we sell
for the pleasure of some night
for the afternoon pleasure or
the four in the morning one sadism
costs so little in Beirut
City! how many crimes in your bars how
much alcohol is in the fountains of the old houses
what a monetary orgy in the call of the
muezzi[8]
city more famous than hell
passenger of all passages
eldest daughter of all trade
object of our nocturnal love
you have intoxicated us with
your irremediable purity.
The tempest has come
the trumpet has sounded JAZZ is
manifested delirium has advanced the hour
the hour the hour has stopped we
are naked destiny is there in front
Gilgamesh has eaten his secret plant[9]
people of Beirut covered with numbers
swimming in butter numbed
with evil thoughts
remember September the 18th
a motorized angel has crossed the sky
break your mirrors
look toward Mount Sannine
look at the sun which is emerging
new
bring out your swords
cut open the Arabian gut
from side to side
let freedom explode!
I have spontaneous funerary orations
for the metals: no sulfur
or manganese but potassium
chloride in the water for the donkeys
and mortuary chalk on the
houses
traitors the painters: they plunge
in buckets of acid
traitors the poets: they speak of roses
when the city is an
asphalt garden
traitors the officials: they have as umbilical
cords the telephone lines
that link then to Washington
Vladivostok[11]
traitors the priests: there is a business shuttle
in the schools and consciences
covered with vermin
let liberation liberate!
City!
you are the foot of the
pink mountain and each one of us
is a legend
One out of two bums is covered with lice
what a velvet on his tender skin a live
hair young men coming out of the Empire
Cinema with swollen lips masturbation in
the dark atavistic hunger installed in
the belly the smell of the film becoming
woman the big desert of love is going
to cover them in the grave already made
they only know how to love their mother…
I know streets where the police
rape anything going on two feet
the sons of the rich
go by them in speedy cars
glassy eyed cold
stone
I would like to announce the fabulous
acceleration of the planets and the
dynamics of catastrophe: sons of Canaanites
you are dying for the very last time
Take a train, my friend, the train
for Amman
“it is the only place on earth
which proposes to us an occult
life and proposes it as the surface
of life”
it is Antonin Artaud who is saying it
of the Red Indian: the oiliferous
hordes ar going to destroy the very
banks they built as numerous as chimney
we have mornings with no memories
dried up well
anthill a southern wart
is gnawing
at the land formerly said of the Ancestor
We have perspired at noon an
icy sweat we have seen thieves
met on the sidewalk an astronaut wearing
a wig our housewives have skins which
are burned nitroglycerine bags put in the
frontal lobe of their lovers explode under
the fatuous laughter of the enemy
Beirut is a witch-city
which acts on the world
as an ill omen
What to do with innocence if not
a parade like a face tumor
one night with a strong light
in California the road and the beach
the black trees against which
Ahmad-the-Violence and Khalil-Debauchery
rub their phallus because they are
scared scared scared of the Express
train which is carrying away their
double at fast speed
a speed
of death
in the dry
ravines
of the city
which is burned
with American phosphorous[13]
It has been a million years
since the Hashemite left
Mecca in the belly of the first
dinosaur to finish up in this
massacre!
It has been one million years
since Amman-Ugliness
has been condemned on the throne of the Apocalypse of the Oil[14]
I took a long walk in Beirut's Corniche
with Al-Ghazzali as a companion [15]
I took olive oil in the Greek
churches and anointed him
Prince of the City[16]
Comrade Al-Ghazali
stays at the Metropol
eats at Barmaki's chats with
his Lebanese friends of the
theatre at Wimpy's and receives
his mail care of Interpol
His own letters are sent by
a traveling whale
they play the flute in the
popular quarters of the city
in order to quiet down the anger
of the citizens…
The god Shamash has come back
in Irbid
in Zarka
in Ur and in
Basrah
the dead are coming back in order to fight again
because the living are cowards!
people of Beirut
in bikinis in slips
covered with feathers if
need be
take the first Express
(take your vertebrae and squeeze out
colonialism like pus)
so that there be
air
so that there be
water
so that there be
earth
so that there be
fire[17]
take the Beirut-Hell Express
take the Express
it is more than too late
the train is whistling stamping spitting
the Beirut-Hell Express
8. a servant at the mosque who leads the call to prayer.
11. A growing Russian city located near the Eastern coast of the country
15. The author wishes to bring the ideals and wisdom of figures such as Al-Ghazali from the past into the present day Beirut.