Abdellatif Laâbi: from Fragments of a Forgotten Genesis
Translation from French by Gordon Hadfield & Nancy Hadfield
FRAGMENT 1
In the beginning was the cry
and already discord
Which tore
the marriage of fire
Confused
violation
sordid struggles of separation
and staggering blows of solitude
Sky drew back from fire
water drew back from sky
earth drew back from water
idea drew back from clay
and the form surged
cut in two
One half was retained
the other thrown in the abyss
No one thought of good
or evil
Who could have done otherwise?
It was necessary to pile
embers against embers
to awaken this unshakeable
fire in the eyes
The prey softens and submits
offers its hairy neck
to the belly’s
voracious germination
Everything devours everything
each cunningly takes its turn
the gluttonous sounds of swallowing
Vast was the destruction
The tadpole
in its stagnant pool
could not fathom
If only he had an antenna
with a small lens attached to the end
he could have …
But what would that accomplish?
Destruction
sole witness to destruction
With this indictment the water returns
cloaking the unsavory spectacle
Amplifying the disorder
These purposeless waves
For a lapse in eternity
there was nothing but waves
A wineskin
its contents shaken
as if something begrudged its roots
With somber jaws
the waves cut to the quick
stifling these stammers
mixing and remixing
For which fleeting idea did they seek revenge?
The waves mixed primal decline
excess of matter
meagerness of memory
This upheaval spawns Hybrid
arch menace
cauldron of pure insanity
Hybrid frolicked
proliferated
color is invented
by a simple rustle of light
free from its form
the gaze rises from the offal
mouths adorned
by either a retractable vulva
or an edible penis
Organs mirthfully
exchanged
One even hears snatches
of clear music
Being sculpts Being
Limbless life
examines itself
Like a vital flowering
with a sprig of intelligence
and immediate love
There were only dreaming leaps
in the dance of origins
Body of all bodies
Hybrid
the possible denying the impossible
progress from the horizon to the whole
genesis in love with genesis
But a darkening
from flashes of rage
and a flood of meteorites
What endures great trials
will last
Then the waves ebbed
abandoning the earth
that overturned cauldron
with its bloodless population
Why this confusion?
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