Destiny feeds on history

The barbarians have taken the land without resistance
These are signs for those who reason
Do not believe that innocence endures
The land is now but the mask of the unleashed beast

The past declines, carried away by time
Some grow drunk and plunge into the breach
Others, in mourning, cling to the ruins
God, being omniscient, weighs them and judges

Is there no longer a just man, an upright soul, a witness
To shelter the child whom shadows envelop?
Yet a day will come, his eyes finally opened,
When he will drink the joy of his mother's face.

The world remakes itself, but the tree leans and falls
In the direction it inclines. The moon rises and dives
Into the lightless night. Thus goes the balance,
Like an isthmus eaten away by the tides of good and evil.

Appearances reign, like a veil upon the world,
That keeps on its surface the border and its shore
Chlorine in water leaves a doubt on the tongue
And enlightened faith ignores itself in this veil

The great art is to defeat an already defeated enemy.
The beast, innocence, shadows, the moon, the isthmus,
And chlorine all speak a starkly fleeting truth —
The one Rimbaud, in his Drunken Boat, thought he could grasp.

I bathe words in a poem to exorcise
The spirit of the foul beast, having emboldened itself
With the ferment of underground powers that AI spawns —
Renan, standing, called the Enlightenment to the rescue.

These experiences prove that karma has no end,
That humility is not measured by candles lit,
That spitting against the wind will only stain your face,
That what peoples want is paradise, not hell.

If the calamus speaks and God cultivates his friends,
The pagan mythologies then attest to purifying
Sciences. Envy and hatred are the batteries
Of destruction. Destiny feeds on history.

1. Daesh overthrew the President of Syria, and its leader, Al-Julani, replaced him, with the blessings of Western democracies.

2. Contrary to the common idea of progress, all the essences and knowledge that ensure a civilization's good health disappear with the passage of time.

   The last line alludes to the two birds described in the Katha Upanishad: "Two birds, a pair of friends, perch on the same tree. One eats the sweet fruit of the pippal, the other, without eating, observes."

3. My niece has given birth to a child. His eyes are closed, and when he opens them, he will see only shadows.

4. I have in mind the isthmus of the Gulf of Lion, at Gruissan.

5. The ultimate veil is to believe that one has torn all veils. And even what one thinks one knows, one ignores.

6. "The great art is to defeat an already defeated enemy." This phrase is a distortion of Sun Tzu's advice, who wrote: "Victories are won without error, by ensuring the defeat of an already defeated enemy."

7. Ernest Renan worries about the decline of France. He believes France must correct its bad tendencies. For him, without nobility and royalty, France cuts itself off from its roots and its history, and will once again sink into a sleep — but a democratic one this time. Paradoxically, this regime does not guarantee freedom of discussion, rationalism, or the rule of science. It will not stand for long.

8. It is always the people who, through their barometer of satisfaction, give legitimacy to authority, regardless of the regime.

9. If a nation destroys its past and its history out of hatred for them, nothing good can be expected for that nation. ■