XXXIX from The Arab Apocalypse

By Etel Adnan b. 1925 Etel Adnan

When the living rot on the bodies of the dead

When the combatants’ teeth become knives

When words lose their meaning and become arsenic

When the aggressors’ nails become claws

When old friends hurry to join the carnage

When the victors’ eyes become live shells

When clergymen pick up the hammer and crucify

When officials open the door to the enemy

When the mountain peoples’ feet weigh like elephants

When roses grow only in cemeteries

When they eat the Palestinian’s liver before he’s even dead

When the sun itself has no other purpose than being a shroud

the human tide moves on . . .

Source: The Arab Apocalypse (The Post-Apollo Press, 1989)

Biography

Poet, essayist, and painter Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon. The daughter of a Greek Christian mother and a Syrian Muslim father, she spoke both Greek and Arabic with her parents, but French became her primary language upon enrolling in a French Lebanese Catholic school at the age of five. While working for the French Information Bureau, she attended at the Ecole Supérieure de Lettres de Beyrouth, where she composed her . . .

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