Behemoth
The Black Dragon
God created the beast Behemoth
on the fifth day
the greatest monster on earth,
a thousand mountains would
produce its fodder.
At the middle of
the journey of our life
It seems to me that I had a dream
And in that dream
I am suddenly woken up by
the fracas of deafening explosions.
I open my eyes
on infinite smoke and fog.
The incandescence of the ground
under my feet reveals to me that
I am in a dark and desolate place.
With one glance around me I discover
That I have arrived at the edge
of the well of hell.
This bottomless gulf of darkness
Roars ceaseless detonations.
I stare at the depths, astounded.
Besides a feeling of infinite terror
My eyes perceive nothing.
It is a place which
has been devastated.
In the past,
it abounded with mountain sources
And lush vegetation.
Today, not a single blade
of grass has survived.
Land of a silence of death.
There
I meet a guide
Burdened by the heavy
portrait of the dead
He walks, exhausted by
the dust of the voyage.
On the mountain where he comes from
the trails don't lead to paradise
He does not know how to write poems
But the poetry
emanating from his heart
Is no less powerful
than the Divine Comedy.
Degree after degree
Going down with my guide
I see the monster's puppets
Who execute invisible orders.
Step by step
I discern many living beings
Enduring the sufferings of labour.
The tender grass
pleasantly itching the skin
I know it
Will soon be crushed
under the heavy hardened mud.
The greatest sorrow of life:
living with hopeless desires.
All the gold mirroring under the moon
Never brought to
the exhausted humanity
A single moment of comfort.
The workers, all night,
smear themselves with murky makeup
Whether they're covered in powder
or simply wear a light touch
Does not depend on their mood
But on the force of the wind.
With this physical body
I can even feel from a distance
Those mechanical
vibrations coming from farther
In the past
We would sing in the light of the sun
and in the soft and joyful air.
But now
I cry the exhausted land.
My guide leads me
to this strange place.
It is said that the owner
of the mine had a dream
And in that dream
The god of the mountain
reproached him
for having dynamited his abode.
He built this statue of the Buddha
To calm his own anguish.
Thus
There, where wealth accumulates
And the men are uprooted
Everything is decreed by the monster
Who hides
Like this tempter of all desires.
I stare at his features,
like cooked by the molten steel
And bathing in sweat.
This ravaged face
Does not prevent me however
From seeing
acutely what he was in the past.
After the passage
through this red blaze
I come back to this dark
and deep valley
The creatures who are sorting
between charcoal and stone
Are still wearing their ink makeup.
The guide shows me the way
Towards his mountain
What a purgatory!
Evil roams the earth
And it will soon be its prey.
In this forest of tombstones
Maybe there are people that I know,
or that I've caught sight of
Who suffer, at this very instant,
or who have already been liberated.
In these passive crowds
There are, also, desperate souls.
Hopefully
Hell does not offer them a place.
The vision that terrifies me the most
is not this multitude of tombs.
It is that of the air stuffed
with poisonous dust.
It's that all living creatures
Up to the smallest worm,
will die from it
It will be the end of our world.
Through the dusty mist,
the consuming flames, the tombs,
and through the devastated homeland
All sacrifices transmuted into steel
Are confiscated to
build the paradise of our desires.
Can it be possible that
I am still dreaming?
Can it be possible that
I am already in paradise?
This brand new place
Is the end of all my chaotic dreams
Like a mirage,
after having surmounted
an oceanic storm.
In paradise
Everything is clean.
In paradise
Work is relaxing
A little bit boring even.
In paradise
The worth and sense of life
do not need to be judged.
In paradise
We see no inhabitants.
Here's what they call a ghost city.
And yet
This is not a dream
It is, indeed, us.
We are this monster
We are his servants.
According to statistics, hundreds of
"ghost cities" have recently
been built in China, inactive, vacant.
The zones thus developed are abandoned.
Millions of migrant workers suffer
from pneumoconiosis in China.
Hundreds of thousands
have already died from it.
In 30 years, the extraction of coal
has reduced the surface of lakes
in inner-Mongolia by 20% and has caused
inestimable damage to the grounds.