XLIV from The Arab Apocalypse

By Etel Adnan b. 1925 Etel Adnan

Where do you want ghosts to reside?

In our wakeful hours there are flowers which produce nightmares

We burned continents of silence the future of nations

the breathing of the fighters got thicker became like oxen’s

there is in that breath sparkles of scorched flesh and the fainting of stars

we crucify Gilgamesh on a TANK Viking II reaches Mars

Imam Ali dances over a nuclear blast

cursed are the clouds which repel water

cursed are the Arabs who fell tall and haggard eucalyptus trees

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 . . .

Continue reading this biography