Godard on 9/11

(...)

Jean-Luc Godard: [History] is what one sees, before saying, when juxtaposing two images: a young woman smiling in a Soviet film is not quite the same as one who smiles in a Nazi film. And the Charlot of MODERN TIMES is, in the beginning, precisely the same as a Ford worker when filmed by Taylor*. To do history is to spend hours looking at these images and then, suddenly, to bring them close, producing a spark. This constructs constellations, stars that come close or move away, like W. Benjamin wanted. Cinema, lived as such, then functions as a metaphor of the world. There remains an archetype joining aesthetics, techniques, morals.

Antoine de Baecque: One gets the impression that what interests you are these juxtapositions, this montage, these collages, but then commentary disgusts you.


JLG: Commentary is the world's greatest super power: one crumbles under statements of intent, diplomatic analyses, and interpretive biographies. Commentary has become a sort of star personality. But it's also a tremendous force of intimidation and standardization: Comment (faire) taire - How (to make) silent - that which escapes preset ideas. The recent images of September 11th are a typical example of the proliferation of commentary, and its carcinogenic power.


A de B: Which is to say...


JLG: Past the effect of amazement in facing the destruction of the house of the father, one always saw the same thing. Or rather, nothing was seen. Just images in loop, always the same, stuttered out by an army of commentators. Seeing is not so much a problem concerning the place we're filming, but more of knowing what we want to film. All that could shock, disturb or produce outrage was systematically cleansed. Not even a body, not even some traces of violence, just the grandeur of the ruins. All that was below or above fiction couldn't find its place. People took the event as just another story, even if unimaginable – but so-called American films are made to be unbelievable. All that could go against that, the quite real dead, the deeper and more painful things than the "axis of evil" was systematically put aside.

That the citizens of the USA can't bear to look at their death in the face is one thing, but for them to reshape the image by cloning it with text becomes very disturbing. They stand on purified propaganda. One ends up being forced not to show anything. And so reigns the uncontested master, the event's commentary transformed into universal visual stereotype.


A de B: Is the struggle between America and Islamicism also a war of images?


JLG: To me, in this digital age, those words seem to come from traditional clichés. An image, even an icon, doesn't make war, since it's primarily a connection to the other, and not destruction. War is a fact of text only, that which interdicts those encounters and, accordingly, the birth of a true text: law, prayer or poetry. The press and television, both ugly hearts, didn't accept Cinderella putting on "the seamless garment of reality" mentioned by A. Bazin. In short, the image in general didn't go unharmed after September 11th. And commentary took care, without qualms, that it should be covered with rags, as if a delinquent to be reeducated.


________
Libération, April 6, 2002
________
*Henry Ford Automakers; Taylor as in Frederick Taylor(ism) - see here .



translated by A. Dias and A. Rector. Thanks to C.

percentage of survival (1)

"the gold tooth paid for the funeral no doubt"









without a pot to piss in

increasingly sanctifying numbers in prison

WORKED NINE DAYS ALTOGETHER LAST WEEK

coming and going is

no laughing matter

Nuovi doveri, più alti, altri doveri...

Daney on ICI ET AILLEURS: A Newly Unearthed Text and Some Known Ones

Bill Krohn has recently rediscovered an unpublished single page text by Serge Daney. The text is a short preface to Godard/Gorin/Miéville's ICI ET AILLEURS (HERE AND ELSEWHERE, 1976). It is presented below in a translation by Laurent Kretzschmar and Krohn.

Daney wrote the text in New York while there to present the first SEMAINE DES CAHIERS DU CINÉMA* at the invitation of Jackie Raynal of the Bleeker Street Cinema in 1977.

It was written for the New York audience about to see ICI ET AILLEURS for the first time. The text however does not appear in the magazine that served as a program for the SEMAINE, The Thousand Eyes, Number 2**. It's possible that this Daney text was translated and printed as a hand-out for the spectators of ICI ET AILLEURS at the Bleeker. However Krohn doesn't recall if it was ever actually printed and believes it has never been published.

There was quite a bit of anxiety surrounding this 1977 screening of ICI ET AILLEURS: about a year earlier, in Paris on September 15, 1976, a nail-bomb was planted by a Zionist terrorist group at one of the two theaters where the film was to have its premiere. The bomb didn't explode, the film was removed from the theater.

Preface to Here and Elsewhere

The film consists of 3 parts, and it’s important to understand the movement animating these 3 parts.

1. The film was undertaken in 1970. At the request of the PLO, JLG goes to the Middle East and shoots several hours of rushes. He returns to France. After the Amman massacres (Sept 1970***), he starts wanting to edit the film. But he discovers he can’t do it.

The first part of the film is composed of the images that JLG went looking for in the Palestinian camps. Eventually, he retains only 5 of them, which are like the image force**** of the PLO’s politics. These images are those that the PLO wants to see broadcast in France. In that sense, they are the images of any propaganda movie. This is the material the film is going to work with.

2. Between 1970 and 1975, Godard tries to come up with an order to edit his film, but he can’t find one. He is very conscious of the fact that many of those he has filmed are now dead and that, as a filmmaker and survivor, he has their image at his disposal. Instead of giving up, he modifies the film and adds other images to the pictures of Palestine, images of France. Mainly of an average French family (the father is unemployed) who watch television. In France, the Left is in a period of retreat and assessment (many dreams have crumbled). It’s also a period where more questions are being asked about the media and their effect on people, about advertising, propaganda, etc.

The second part of the film, the longest and the most complex, cannot be summed up here. It’s an analysis of the "chains of images" in which we are all caught. One of its conclusions is what Godard denounces as “playing the sound too loud” (including the the Internationale), i.e. covering one sound with another, thus becoming incapable of simply seeing what’s in the images.

3. The third part of the film returns to the images of the beginning. But with a dialectical change. There’s no longer one but two voices-over who take the time to watch the images again (like on an editing table) to see both what they are really saying and what’s wrong, to listen to these images. This part is therefore a kind of critique of the first part because it criticises any propaganda, if propaganda means – for a filmmaker – using the image of others to make this image say something else than what the others are saying in it. So what’s at stake is the engagement of a filmmaker as a filmmaker. For it’s in the nature of cinema (delay between the time of shooting and the time of projection) to be the art of here and elsewhere. What Godard says, very uncomfortably and very honestly, is that the true place of the filmmaker is in the AND. A hyphen only has value if it doesn’t confuse what it unites.

Serge Daney

[unidentified], Gorin, and Godard shooting UNTIL VICTORY, "the film undertaken...at the request of the PLO", in a Palestinian refugee camp, Jordan, 1970. Unknown Photographer.

Daney in New York, November 1977. Photo: Jackie Raynal.

***

Serge Daney continually wrote and spoke of ICI ET AILLEURS. Below are excerpts from 2 essays and an interview, by no means exhaustive of his engagement with the film.

In ICI ET AILLEURS, for example, a "film" about images brought back from Jordan (1970-1974), it is clear that the questions raised by the film about itself (the kind of disjunction it effects in every direction: between here and elsewhere, images and sounds, 1970 and 1975) is only possible because the syntagm "Palestinian revolution" already functions as an axiom, as something which is a matter of course (something already-said-by-others, in this case, by Al Fatah), and in relation to which Godard does not have to define himself personally (to say "me, I," but also to say "me, I am with them"), or to show his position in the film (to socialize, make convincing, desirable, the position he has taken, his initial choice: for the Palestinians, against Israel.) Always the logic of school.

(...)

The impossibility of obtaining a new type of filmic contract has thus led him to keep (to retain) images and sounds without finding anyone to whom he can return them, restore them. Godard's cinema is a painful meditation on the theme of restitution, or better, of reparation. Reparation would mean returning images and sounds to those from whom they were taken. This also commits them to produce their own images and sounds. And all the better if that production obliges the filmmaker to change his own way of working!

There is a film in which this restitution-reparation takes place, ideally at least - ICI ET AILLEURS. These images of Palestinian men and women that Godard and Gorin, invited by the PLO, brought back from the Middle East, these images which he has kept in front of him for five years -- to whom should they be returned?

To the general public avid for sensation (Godard+Palestine=scoop)? To the politicized public eager to be confirmed in dogma (Godard+Palestine=worthy cause=art)? To the PLO who invited him, permitted him to film and trusted him (Godard+Palestine=propaganda weapon)? Not even them. So?

One day, between 1970 and 1975, Godard realizes that the soundtrack is not completely translated, that what the fedayin are saying, in the shots where they appear, has not been translated from Arabic. And that in the end no one would be very bothered by this (accepting the fact that a voice-over covers these voices). Now, Godard says, the fedayin whose words have remained a dead letter are dead men with a reprieve - the living dead. They or others like them died in 1970, were killed by Hussein's troops.

To make the film ("You must always finish what you have started") is then, quite simply, to translate the soundtrack, so that one hears what is being said, or better: so that one listens to it. What was retained has been freed, what was kept has been restored, but it's too late. Images and sounds are rendered as honors are rendered, to those to whom they belong: to the dead.

--Excerpt from THE T(H)ERRORIZED, Cahiers du cinema, no. 262/63, January 1976. Translation by Bill Krohn and Charles Cameron Ball.

(...) In a Beirut hotel, a Frenchman ‘in love with the Orient’ (Jean Carmet) takes photos of a recent slaughter out of a briefcase and puts them up for auction. Children lead Laschen and Hoffman to a carbonised corpse. Everything has image potential, a second, now marketable death. What’s to be made of these images, Laschen wonders? What’s to be made of this chain where we necessarily feature, from one link to another: corpse, photograph, modelmaker, reader? What’s to be made of his fine soul?

Godard already asks this question in a film now six years old. The film, which talks about the Middle East, was called ICI ET AILLEURS and it wasn’t a great success. Before photos of the victims of the Amman massacres of 1970, Godard allowed himself the black humour of wondering (in an aside) if these extras had been well paid, and how much? The lesson was clear. When Godard and Schlondorff began making films we could still think of war as merely obscene (LES CARABINIERS, LE COUP DE GRACE). Nowadays it has become completely pornographic. There are image dealers just as there are arms dealers. A film-maker occupies a place somewhere in this chain. Does he know this? With CIRCLE OF DECEIT, Schlondorff has just found out.

Godard halted the chain, blocked the spectacle, reflected on an image, imposed his voice on us, the chagrined voice-off of a moralist. (...)

--Excerpt from entry on CIRCLE OF DECEIT (Volker Schlöndorff). from the Ciné Journal, Libération, 29 October 1981. Translation by Liz Heron.

Philippe Roger: How can the idea of information and the idea of democracy be articulated today?

Daney: There’s no question that seems more urgent, and yet it’s as if we hadn’t begun to think about it. I’m staggered when I see that all I have to do nowadays is recycle a tenth of what was in ICI ET AILLEURS for me to look like some kind of guru in the eyes of professional journalists or film students. It’s nice for me, but all the same it’s strange. Strange too how in the wake of this war (ed. note: The First Gulf War) the usual theoreticians and advocates of the ‘fourth estate’ are silent.

What is democratic? That more and more people become amateur semiologists and learn to surf blithely on the linguistic drift imposed on them by the market, via advertsisng? That was more or less the idea that prevailed in the Eighties; the '68ers delight in being reconciled with the idea of the market. Or else that more and more people have the capacity to see what is (just an image) and to imagine what is missing (that more, just image which is being kept from them perhaps)? Will this be an idea of the Nineties? To be honest, I don’t know.

--Excerpt from Le Passeur, Philippe Roger's interview with Daney, 1991. Translation by Liz Heron.

***

notes

*The films screened at the SEMAINE were ICI ET AILLEURS [Godard, Gorin, Miéville, 1975], COMMENT ÇA VA? [Godard, Miéville, 1977], NEWS FROM HOME [Akerman, 1976], L'ASSASSIN MUSICIEN [Benoît Jacquot, 1976], IM LAUF DER ZEIT [Wenders, 1976], FORTINI-CANI [Straub, Huillet, 1976], MOI, PIERRE RIVIÈRE - AYANT ÉGORGÉ MA MÈRE, MA SOEUR ET MON FRÈRE... [René Allio, 1976] and NUMÉRO DEUX [Godard, Miéville, 1975].

**This number of The Thousand Eyes, slim though it is, has considerable heft and merits further mention: it includes a number of translations of Cahiers texts (Narboni, Skorecki, Bonitzer, Foucault) on the aforementioned programmed films; the first English translation of Daney's seminal essay on Godard and pedagogy "THE T(H)EORRORIZED"; and two crucial pieces by Krohn, "THE TINKERERS" and an interview with Daney himself, which illuminate the terms and matters of a specific cultural struggle, namely how Daney and the Cahiers went from their "passion for films like BABY FACE NELSON (Siegel) and RANCHO NOTORIOUS (Lang)" to "films made in factories, ghettoes and armed camps all over the world."

***For a bit of information on Black September in which thousands of Palestinians were killed read here.

****Translator's note: "image force": the electrostatic force on a charge in the neighborhood of a conductor, which may be thought of as the attraction to the charge's electric image.

***

To see fragments of Godard and Gorin at work in the planning stages (elsewhere) of UNTIL VICTORY ("the originality of the Palestinian revolutionary situation"), see GODARD IN AMERICA (1970) here.

Special thanks to Bill and Laurent.

The wounded young

"In the documentary that followed the THE SEARCHERS, John Wayne explained that the gesture in the final shot of the film, a way of holding the right elbow with the left hand, came from Harry Carey (Sr.)- the greatest Western actor of all time, Ford says. But what would the gesture be without the wide body of John Wayne, the slight bending of the left leg?" - wrote c., of dias felizes, here

Below, the left arm of Harry Carey Jr. — a living, working dedication to Carey Sr., with a metaphorical sling for the young to heal, as they sometimes do so well — as seen by Ford in THREE GODFATHERS:

"YOU CANNOT ALIBI."

Pedro Costa carte blanche selections...

...from this past September 29th, at the Cinemateca Portuguesa on the occasion of their 50th anniversary, (thank you andré):


SO DARK THE NIGHT (1946, Joseph H. Lewis)
THE EXILES (1961, Kent MacKenzie)
BILLIE HOLIDAY SINGS FINE AND MELLOW ('Sound of Jazz' - CBS television broadcast, New York, December 8, 1957)

*****

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

-did you die?
-that i don't know.

R.I.P.

("You could see La Punition three or four times" - for Sam Di Iorio)

(English translation of the Open Letter posted yesterday)

Dear Inrocks,

We are the editors of Cahiers du cinéma.

When Le Monde decided to sell les Cahiers, we took the opportunity to develop a project with the editor-in-chief for the purchase of the magazine. That project, born of the desire and the need for critical thinking about cinema, has convinced financial partners, our main shareholder being Thierry Wilhelm - press and internet editor - along with, among others, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, a publisher who has always been close to the magazine.

Our project is also that of a huge number of old members of Les Cahiers, like Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jean Narboni, André S. Labarthe, Jean-Louis Comolli, Louis Skorecki, Luc Moullet…, and longtime companions like Jacques Rancière and Jean Louis Schefer. They, more than twenty-five in total, have indicated their commitment by signing a letter we published in Libération.

This project was initiated several months ago. It has constructed itself in plain view of everyone, and its aims are now well-known: renewing the Cahiers in depth by developing a new complementarity between the magazine and the internet; ensuring the sustainability of the structure in all its activities; guaranteeing continued employment for the salaried staff.

All of this you know. Or rather, no, you pretend not to know it when you maintain your proposal to take over an inside project, announcing among other things further layoffs.

Is it possible that these Inrocks are the same news magazine that displays a leftwing sensibility? Is it possible that you wish to take over a magazine, at this historical moment, that has the will and means to ensure its own future?

We don't believe it. There must be a mistake.

Therefore, do not delay in letting people know it's not true: Les Inrocks don't want to buy Les Cahiers. They are too attached to the plurality of the press and to lively critic debate for that.

Sincerely,
Pierre Alferi, Hervé Aubron, Christophe Beney, Nicole Brenez, Jean Douchet, Laurence Giavarini, Charlotte Garson, Gilles Grand, Bill Krohn, Ludovic Lamant, Elisabeth Lequeret, Arnaud Macé, Philippe Mangeot, Thierry Méranger, Cyril Neyrat, Eugenio Renzi, Antoine Thirion, Axel Zeppenfeld.


LETTRE OUVERTE AUX INROCKUPTIBLES‏

Chers Inrocks,

Nous sommes la rédaction des Cahiers du cinéma. Nous avons voulu saisir l'occasion de la mise en vente du titre par Le Monde pour développer un projet de reprise avec la rédaction en chef. Ce projet, né d'une envie et d'une nécessité critiques, a su convaincre des partenaires financiers : notre actionnaire majoritaire est Thierry Wilhelm – entrepreneur presse et Internet –, aux côtés duquel on compte, entre autres, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, éditeur historiquement proche de la revue.

Ce projet est aussi celui d'un grand nombre d'anciens des Cahiers, parmi lesquels Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jean Narboni, André S. Labarthe, Jean-Louis Comolli, Louis Skorecki, Luc Moullet… ; et de compagnons de route, comme Jacques Rancière ou Jean Louis Schefer. Ceux-ci, plus de vingt-cinq au total, ont marqué leur engagement en signant avec nous une tribune dans Libération.

Ce projet s'est déclaré il y a plusieurs mois. Il a évolué et s'est construit au vu et au su de tous. Ses atouts sont aujourd'hui connus : renouveler en profondeur les Cahiers en développant notamment une complémentarité nouvelle entre la revue et Internet ; assurer la pérennité de la structure dans toutes ses activités ; garantir l'emploi des salariés.

Tout cela, vous ne l'ignorez pas. Ou plutôt si, vous feignez de l'ignorer en maintenant votre candidature au rachat face à un projet maison. Vous annoncez en outre des licenciements.

Est-il possible que ces Inrocks-là soient les mêmes que le news magazine à la sensibilité de gauche affichée ? Est-il possible que vous convoitiez un titre démontrant, en ce moment historique, qu'il a la volonté et les moyens d'assurer par lui-même son avenir ?

Nous n'y croyons pas. Il y a forcément erreur.

N'attendez donc pas pour faire savoir que c'est faux : Les Inrocks ne veulent acheter les Cahiers. Ils sont trop attachés à la pluralité de la presse et à la vivacité du débat critique.

Bien à vous,

Pierre Alferi, Hervé Aubron, Christophe Beney, Nicole Brenez, Jean Douchet, Laurence Giavarini, Charlotte Garson, Gilles Grand, Bill Krohn, Ludovic Lamant, Elisabeth Lequeret, Arnaud Macé, Philippe Mangeot, Thierry Méranger, Cyril Neyrat, Eugenio Renzi, Antoine Thirion, Axel Zeppenfeld.

♬

"Time to prove my love for the land and for the nightingale; For in this age the weapon devours the guitar"
- Mahmoud Darwich

"No age for rhythm..."
- Jacques Tati (Parade)

Found: A musical revue from Tehran, 
going from the continent of cinema (Chaplin)
to the homeland of fiction (Russia),
the coalescence of the willing
the will of the coalescence.
Never coalition forces, forces coalition.
Cinema...

Une catastrophe,
c'est la première
strophe d'un poème
d'amour

***The Viennale Trailer for this year, by Godard

Danke
Dana
Linssen!

Vous n'avez rien contre la jeunesse????

Unsigned dispatch:

In May the media moguls of Le Monde announced that they were putting theCahiers du Cinéma up for sale. At the moment there are really two likely buyers for the magazine:

1. Thierry Wilhelm, an investor in Mediart who wants to see the magazine continue to evolve as it has under Jean-Michel Frodon and Emmanuel Burdeau.

2. Les Inrockuptibles, whose editor was one of the group Frodon and Burdeau replaced ten years ago, Jean-Marc Lalanne. Here is a description of that option that has already appeared in the French press: "According to Frédéric Allary (directeur général of The Inrockuptibles), « the talent of Cahiers should extend to all imagesi». As far as he is concerned a review of the video game Grand Theft Auto IV would be perfectly appropriate. The period Lalanne spent at the Cahiers already exemplified this broadening of the magazine's aims — too broad for some tastes. A wide open approach, open to video games, television and...reality tv. High treason? Perhaps. In any case, Lalanne, according to Allary, is pushing for a complete editorial makeover."

A return to the policies Lalanne advocates would be a return to the days when theCahiers, chasing vainly after the "youth market," interviewed pornographers and video game designers. It would of course entail — this was announced last week — the dismissal of the people who replaced that"forward-looking group": Frodon and Burdeau, as well as at least one indispensable 20-year member of the staff. Grudges die hard in Parisian intellectual circles...

The project of an independent Cahiers, financed by Wilhelm, has the support of 90% of the current staff, as well as a varied roster of old and new collaborators, according to a statement published in Liberation:

PIERRE ALFERI, HERVÉ AUBRON, CHRISTOPHE BENEY, STÉPHANE BOUQUET, NICOLE BRENEZ, JEAN DOUCHET, CHARLOTTE GARSON, LAURENCE GIAVARINI, GILLES GRAND, BILL KROHN, LUDOVIC LAMANT, ELISABETH LEQUERET, ARNAUD MACÉ, PHILIPPE MANGEOT, THIERRY MÉRANGER, CYRIL NEYRAT, JEAN-PIERRE REHM, EUGENIO RENZI, ANTOINE THIRION, AXEL ZEPPENFELD.

Rédacteurs anciens : CÉDRIC ANGER, JACQUES AUMONT, FRANÇOIS BÉGAUDEAU, JACQUES BONTEMPS, CLAUDE CHABROL, MARC CHEVRIE, JEAN-LOUIS COMOLLI, SYLVAIN COUMOUL, MICHEL DELAHAYE, BERNARD EISENSCHITZ, JEAN-PAUL FARGIER, JEAN-ANDRÉ FIESCHI, JEAN-LUC GODARD, PASCAL KANÉ, ANDRÉ S. LABARTHE, JEAN-LOUIS LEUTRAT, SUZANNE LIANDRAT-GUIGUES, LUC MOULLET, JEAN NARBONI, SYLVIE PIERRE, JACQUES RANCIÈRE, FABRICE REVAULT (D’ALLONNES), JEAN LOUIS SCHEFER, BARBET SCHROEDER, LOUIS SKORECKI, XAVIER TRESVAUX, DOMINIQUE VILLAIN.

Le Monde, which is just interested in making the best deal possible, might not care about that list of supporters, but anyone who cares about the magazine will recognize the names.

Proposals are being presented to the seller on Monday, September 15. It would be only correct and appropriate for Les Inrockuptibles and Jean-Marc Lalanne to withdraw their proposal, which would engage the magazine on a backward course unrelated to the aims and standards that have made it an important magazine.

thanks for the chew, Manny.
goodbye, Manny.




Manny Farber, 1917-2008

"reunites a family, then walks away..."

a propos of Mubarak, Hannah...

a thousand pardons
das allierte hauptquartier
hat ihre akte
verloren
but I found
your name
in my father’s
papers

do you realize
thirty years
the age of reason
my friend
we’ve seen worse
it’s long
and it’s short

the gray-green moll
poison Ivy kid

it’s true!
the Berlin wall

is long
and it's short
it is still
Marx’s triumph

how's that?

when an idea enters
into the masses
it becomes a material force

you can see it
like that
in any case
that’s all over and done with

what should I
do
oh sorrow
have I dreamed my life
what should I do

____________

__________

_____

___

_

...Laura, Dora, pilgrimages...

Among the ruins of the city of Karame (Jordan), a little girl from the Fatah recites a poem by Mahmoud Darwish: "I shall resist..."

He wrote this for a friend:

"Diary of a Palestinian Wound: For Fadwa Tuqan"

We do not need to be reminded:
Mount Carmel is in us
and on our eyelashes the grass of Galilee.
Do not say: If we could run to her like a river.
Do not say it:
We and our country are one flesh and bone.
Before June we were not fledgeling doves
so our love did not wither in bondage.
Sister, these twenty years
our work was not to write poems
but to be fighting.
The shadow that descends over your eyes
-demon of a God
who came out of the month of June
to wrap around our heads the sun-
his color is martyrdom
the taste of prayer.
How well he kills, how well he resurrects!
The night that began in your eyes-
in my soul it was a long night's end:
Here and now we keep company
on the road of our return
from the age of drought.
And we came to know what makes the voice of the nightingale
a dagger shining in the face of the invaders.
We came to know what makes the silence of the graveyard
a festival...orchards of life.
You sang your poems, I saw the balconies
desert their walls
the city square extending to the midriff of the mountain:
It was not music we heard.
It was not the color of words we saw:
A million heroes were in the room.
This land absorbs the skins of martyrs.
This land promises wheat and stars.
Worship it!
We are its salt and its water.
We are its wound, but a wound that fights.
Sister, there are tears in my throat
and there is fire in my eyes:
I am free.
No more shall I protest at the Sultan's Gate.
All who have died, all who shall die at the Gate of Day
have embraced me, have made of me a weapon.
Ah my intractable wound!
My country is not a suitcase
I am not a traveler
I am the lover and the land is the beloved.
The archaeologist is busy analyzing stones.
In the rubble of legends he searches for his own eyes
to show
that I am a sightless vagrant on the road
with not one letter in civilization's alphabet.
Meanwhile in my own time I plant my trees.
I sing of my love.
It is time for me to exchange the word for the deed
Time to prove my love for the land and for the nightingale:
For in this age the weapon devours the guitar
And in the mirror I have been fading more and more
Since at my back a tree began to grow.