Glory to Those Who Torture Us
Abdellatif Laâbi
Translated by André Naffis-Sahely
glory glory
we are the chosen people
erected upon the peaks of fate for us the tomorrows that sing rivers of honey and milk
sacrifice brothers sacrifice
exile in sacrifice
o the apotheosis of throats ready
heritage Abraham’s sadism
crimes on the table
heritage faith struck down by miracles the desert’s spontaneous abundance
m i r a c l e we do not suffer
o the hired killer’s unblemished brow the tickling of electrodes
and the scalpel stripping the vertebrae
again and again
breathing in all the gases greedily swallowing the grenades
glory
to the firing squad
embracing the wrong side and the right side
for the sacrifice
of the ripe finger that fondles the trigger that kills us
the cast iron sparkles
stillborn
skirted the scalping of the pecking order
I didn’t want to partake in this spectacle no
puppet I didn’t want them to execute me
ludicrously on the bleachers
but to remain a valve
seaweed
a body throbbing with elemental breath
diastole to remain a pharynx without
a shot at the strongest life
to be of this night that doesn’t dismantle the day of this leavening not of this dough
to be at last of these poisonous knots of roots
a blanket refusal
this so-called complication of speaking organisms
I refuse this procreating of automatons you’ve have drawn blood from the language and the world
you’ve drawn blood from life forgotten forgiveness
of all rock solidified mass
from one mass to another a clash the stale air of shacks
the raised garden beds
I’m not speaking of war
of the recolonisation of the third world of those rejected grafts
it’s I alone who rejoices
we’re still dying of hunger
in thesetortures
like a flask used to beat
the poem
into my flesh
I do not control the impulse of my fist patience
all these lives belong to me
I will speak of everything
I answer violence
with violence
before a hired hand
comes to stab me in the back
patience
I’m going to speak
of the dead that went before me
those I spend time with and those to come
everything will be said this is my pledge to you
those dogs have sullied our memory who will want to touch this history where slimy rats have scurried abolish to begin
then the repetition the official accounts
will not include us napalm impedes the machine gun
blowpipe from behind
the moon any time now the islands the steppes
and overturn the whole lot
some martians will come to finish off the survivors
monstrosities monstrosities
in the severity of the days of retribution I see nothing but killers
this brotherhood of killers
that bends the bow
the target hurled
into the crime hail barbarity of great famines
hail tribal flints
hail jungle of crudeness something in me reawakens
once again the miracle of the body I begin by denying
my hand surfaces breaks away and returns
grabs my genitals coldly exposed
into a desert of salt flats
***
[Translated from the French by André Naffis-Sahely. This excerpt is from Abdellatif Laâbi’s The Rule of Barbarism, forthcoming from Island Positions. Naffis-Sahley's translation of Laâbi’s autobiographical novel The Bottom of the Jar is forthcoming from Archipelago Books]