Paris, the Wounded
No mere city is Paris, not just a metropolis,
City of sanctuaries like the divine Acropolis;
Not merely of Europe the radiant capital
As well as of France in its borders hexagonal.
‘Tis something more than the work of Creator,
Structured in poetry and bathed in splendor;
Flower of science, of culture, in all at the summit,
In all human history there is nothing that’s like it.
See the scholarship, learning and history,
Achievement in arts and in law, this is its victory;
Humanism, love, and freedom, fraternity,
Open to all, offering justice, courage, equality.
Dear Paris, you were cradle and school to me,
My love and my passion, a teacher most true to me.
Paris heir of Athens, Europe’s great master,
Pagan science that bloomed in the Christian cloister
Of our culture ‘tis now the radiant light,
For culture and art ‘tis our soul’s delight.
I was formed in its studios and great universities,
Its museums, its squares and its learnèd societies.
The Creator formed Paris through genius of man,
It began as the huts of a tribal clan.
This city was once no more than some marshes
But hard human toil brought homes to its reaches;
High walls rose up out of the wilderness void
Temples of worship and learning alloyed.
Around the broad river rose museums and palaces,
Amidst gardens and avenues and kingly galleries.
Each nook and each stone, each angle, each sculpture,
Stands out by its presence, its soul and its texture.
This jewel, this crown, this unequalled miracle,
Makes the Gods jealous by its wonders aesthetical.
Now this altar divine, this hope of mankind,
Is victim of murder and savagery blind.
A horde of barbarians with murd’rous intent
Has come from afar on atrocities bent.
Come out of the murk, they do Da’esh’s will,
To burn and cut throats and to die when they kill.
Working for Satan, not for Prophet of God,
‘Tis hatred they kindle when they kill young and old.
They use slaughter and rape which they spread far and wide,
Vow hate to the West and all culture deride.
No vision have they but all progress despise,
All science, all knowledge, are wrong in their eyes.
For God Almighty they claim that they speak
when boasting the chaos they everywhere wreak.
They take Holy Scripture with intent to misquote
And claim for their crimes what the Prophet once wrote.
They say they are saints and to heaven will go,
Rewarded for ever for foul deeds that they do.
One cannot imagine how such hate fills their mind,
Bringing down death on those not of their mind;
Ready they are to cause their own death,
When murd’ring the innocent with their last breath.
Neither churches nor schools, there is nothing they spare,
No hospitals, banks or planes in the air.
Extremism blind, for all they have done,
They talk madly of God but their problem is one:
They would live in a heaven of sensual desire
To no vision of God does their madness aspire,
To no freedom for man in his religious belief,
Or respect for his rights or help in his grief.
Paris, pole star, flower of our world,
Cedar of Lebanon, light brightly burned!
That night ‘twas a feast for happiness fair,
For dancing with love and joy in the air;
Then came explosions, not a firework display,
For bullets rained down on a people once gay.
Blood on the pavements, and sharp cordite stench,
A crime done in hatred of all that is French.
Here lay young people who no evil had sought,
Innocent youth whose days were cut short.
As they fell under fire from mad Salafists,
All hell had broke loose from the wild terrorists.
You murderers have killed this youth seeking pleasure,
Working or studying but deserving its leisure.
It staggers belief how those violent lost souls
Remained so long hidden like burrowing moles.
In this third millennium spirits want evolution
with science, reform, fighting hunger, disease and pollution,
These people are bogged down in a state of barbarity,
Groping in darkness they seek without clarity.
Why hate they Europe and the West altogether,
With dreams of pillage and raids in the desert?
Paris means France, a country of grandeur,
With Notre Dame church robed in history and splendor.
On an isle other-worldly she floats on the Seine,
Like a ship with white sails that is breasting the main;
Notre Dame Queen of Heaven, who protects and inspires
Claudel, Victor Hugo with heavenly fires.
Its blazing stained glass tells us the story
Of saints now in heaven illumined with glory.
Not just Paris but France and all Europe are scarred
At the hands of fanatics for whom no crime is barred.
Strange pleasure they take in seeing blood shed
They should live in their time, advance with it instead.
To this hate of theirs we must compassion oppose,
The Jihad of kind heart where all happiness grows.
To those preachers we offer both saints and good sense
And the force of our prayers in a silence intense.
Let reason and values tell these people that rave
God loves all to whom life he once gave;
We offer friendship, warm hearts and admiration
To people who cherish our work of creation.
These brothers misled to cause devastation
We urge them to come to a broad imitation,
We, also, descend from a once-brutal age
And our Scriptures we review on many a page,
To understand better we have placed reliance
On the learning of scholars and great men of science.
Their efforts have led to a great evolution,
No Galileo now would fear persecution.
Let us go forth together to get clearer sight,
Coming out of the darkness and reaching to light.
French by Joseph Matar – Translation from the French: Kenneth Mortimer
