Listen to me, my son, this is what must come to pass:
The day we become wiser,
and cease to bestow nobility upon the priest
draped in his priestly robes, adorned with gold,
and see nothing in his words but mad delusions,
we shall tell him: “You are lying!”
And we shall refuse to follow him.
With hesitant steps, keeping watch in this drunken world,
we shall fashion, from the light that was stolen from us,
dreams intertwined with a nature clothed
in the sweet fragrance of yesterday, of our innocent childhood.
Where, straight from the azure sky,
a handful of sparks and white roses
shall rain down upon our uplifted heads,
and we shall cast them upon those angels, before all else.
As the golden sun rises, embracing the streets,
and before the grandeur of its ever-brightening rays,
we shall say: “Enough hatred and injustice!”
Today, tolerance is our calling.
And at last, I shall see children grow
free in their thoughts, liberated from this monastery.
And this old people, who yesterday knelt in gloom,
shall cross the threshold where, mingling with the shadows,
the radiance of a divine dawn
sets the soul free and ennobles
the human body.
And we shall gather in the meadows,
beneath gentle breezes, in the shade of cypress trees,
all of us in harmony: brothers, friends, and fathers,
far from the wailing that war once brought forth.
We shall all love one another, and the future shall appear
like those ships approaching
from a horizon without end or boundaries,
moving forward, yet looking back
to warn us of our mistakes and erase hatred.
O human being, we are children of the same nature,
and we shall replace tears with smiles.
But what am I saying? I am drunk, and I write these words
as I contemplate the eternal, the greatest of miracles,
which wove the beauty of the fruit of its passion.
And as I contemplate it, I have but one question:
What are we doing in this vast expanse?
Like pebbles cast into a pond,
men, so very great, yet so utterly insignificant,
have fashioned a crime out of the splendour of the divine...
One day, as we gaze at the stars,
we shall understand that each of us is a pillar of this temple.
And in this universe governed by science,
we shall wander patiently into infinity,
towards wisdom, conscious of our own beauty.
No savage instinct shall ever be able to deprive us
of life, the most beautiful gift bestowed by the Creator,
as we establish paradise upon this magnificent Earth.
And in the furrows of scars etched into our souls,
we shall sow these virtues before the harvest:
harmony, peace, love, and tolerance,
tulips from which the decaying old man shall rise again,
strong and mighty, though yesterday he wandered lost and terrified.
And one day, within this dark gaze,
we shall see a spark emerge from this blinded eye,
and understand that it is my duty, and yours,
to say: “Let us feel this joy, this sweet melody.”
And as I have told you, I tell you once more:
“Love, love again and forevermore,”
for what is the point of squandering our days,
seated at banquets, amid pale opulence,
if togetherness adds nothing but an ‘s’ to our cruelty!
I tell you: the future is love, the ear of wheat
broken by your anger, O human being, and your sinful pride.
Yet the dream demands
that we mend what was dismal yesterday
and build a future filled neither with statues nor monuments.
For the greatest structure is, in truth, this very moment
we spend building what we are,
we human beings, born to fulfil this purpose.
Peace and wisdom: a delicate vessel
that demands patience and shatters with haste.
What do cities, progress, and skyscrapers matter
if each of us is one day destined for the guillotine?
And who shall remain in these magnificent palaces
if I leave this Earth, and you depart as well,
wandering mindlessly through this hostile world,
your precious souls seized by a rifle?
We are all victims of our mad delusions,
and only the anguish of mothers shall remain:
sorrowful, withered, their backs bent by age,
because their sons, who are no soldiers, have been gathered into battalions,
and in their multitudes, they all march towards this precipice,
like embers cast into a furnace.
They were not the cause of this war.
And who is the enemy? A human being, your own brother?!
Evil was born in the depths of our hearts,
but you can stop this infernal executioner
who has erected his throne within your hardened, ignorant hearts;
for war ends with a pure thought.
And our children?
Will they be happy after all this suffering?
Yes! I shall answer, for as they erase hatred,
they will learn from the mistakes you made,
and from those I made, and without pride, they shall draw honour
from having achieved what we failed to accomplish.
Hand in hand, they shall avert tragedies,
today and tomorrow, as they contemplate on the shore
the one-eyed, the deaf, and the maimed, still living.
With one heart, their Sorbonne halls, once scattered and lost,
shall now come together and look towards the future,
filled with dreams and visions, governed by peace,
which the passing of time struggles to catch up with.
Through days and nights under bombardment,
they shall surrender themselves there, carried irreversibly away
into the sweet vastness of human thought,
once beyond their reach, but now theirs.
And they shall pass it on at any cost, for it is worth its weight in gold,
to immortalise our brothers who died unjustly,
victims of a vile ideal and a horror steeped in hatred.
And our little girls, wandering happily,
in paradise, after having tasted hell, the inferno;
and tomorrow, it shall be knowledge, not instinct, that guides
this East, gently and attentively, by the hand.
And lightning, with eyes growing ever brighter,
shall contemplate what God fashioned long ago,
and what was destroyed, only to be restored by Him.
And at last, from my lofty vantage point,
as the rose blossoms upon its stem,
I shall see that your red flag, Lebanon, emblem of sovereignty,
shall come to signify unity more than cruelty...
Shall we set our hearts upon the right track,
the one that will lead us straight to this great gateway,
where white doves shall soar above the mountain peaks
to erase the terror that reigns over the graves!
