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A City in Pain: A Labyrinth of Damnation
Here Beelzebub like puppets in his hands makes man dance,
In the old time on Candleman Day, Rood Mass day, Lammas Day and the eve of the All Hallows people used to celebrate in this city the festival of the witches in the presence of the Prince of the Dark who their powers enhanced,
By kissing Devil’s reverse face under animal’s tail,
In promescuous orgies that increased the fertility of the hunters and herdmen,
The devotees copulated with atrificial phallus to enact the black magic that even gripped virgins and nuns.
In the same place there are swelling numbers of brothels,
Appalling walls covered with nudity of advertisements ,
Lightening flashes of the cafes, nightclubs and taverns,
The glaring strip-shows with music and dance,
The whirling hurries of the paltry loves, apathy, sleep and copulation ,
Like the powerful mechanical engine’s prolonged exhautions,
Wound, nausea and dereliction,
Like phantoms flying in the alleyways there are relations between the consumer and consumed ,
Hearts’ remorse, disgust and incessant fumes.
Inside the city gate,
Wandering in slow moving shapes in gentleness,
In front of the banks , arcades , staircases,
Or inside revolving doors, twisting passageways winding through the shops,
Where there are dark caves,
Where sellers stand upright or sit crosslegged,
The smiling faces please the customers,
The ladies hold between the coloured lips their metaphysical warmths,
And circumambulate difficulties of selling products by using physical charms,
When the shadows wander by through the doorways,
In solitary suffering the citizens gaze at the windowpanes,
Without needing to know who pass by,
Like a number in statistics of the millions everyone enter and exit this city many times before they die.
In this city in pain,
The vehicles, carriages , coffins mingling with the movements of the organs breathing, and activating hunger, thirst, despair and disdain,
From streets to streets,
In boulvards and avenues amidst bustling rush,
Carry shoppers , merchants and goods,
With indifference transfer furnitures, loads , as well as men and women with happy or unhappy moods,
Constantly changing the maniquins, rolling through the city in the labyrinthine maze,
In the glasspanes reflect the unreal world at the vacuous gaze.
Everyday in boats sailors arrive in search of hope,
From the abyss of the dark,
They come flocking across the gulf,
In squares, terraces and courtyards they stand squeezed to see the city’s marvellous arts,
As tourists, lined up as herds, look at the ruins and ramparts,
Stand in front of the cathedrals,
Visit the dwellings and the tombs of the saints and the martyrs.
Loitering and straying in the markets places ,
In the commercial districts, the galleries of arcades ,
From Money-Exchangers to greengrocer’s shades ,
They see phantaspagoria of the Chinese latern :
In Dragon’s twisting paths,
In the blue beams illumining the skull,
Hang the masks of the unreal men and women walking along the streets and the boulvards.
In enormous number they move through this unreal time and space,
Carrying will, languages and thoughts,
Like strange creatures in an ocean deep they ascend, descend the steps in the market place,
In worlds within worlds rush in a space that is boundless,
Like homosapiens, walking erect in the universe, sing, murmur, and seek happiness and escape,
In dreamy eyes in the arching marvel , where Prometheus and Heracles had once risen,
Seek to fly away through the streaks of rays,
Wish to make a journey back into hundreds of years through history, myth, and the legends of the inner space.
This city lies on the shore of a strange sea;
Its water are illumined by starlights,
Its foam scatter everywehere:
From the bubbles in the champagne bottle and the laughters of the night in the drunkards’ sodden stairs,
To the morning bath drooping from ladies’ golden hair,
After a bleeding love in the dingy suffocated air,
It fills the awaken eyes with confession and prayers.
In the sunlight and the golden dust,
In the meadering streams it moves through asphalts and grass,
Passes by the shops selling perfumes , scents and Eau de Cologne filled in glass,
Moves by the life that breathes through shining marbles , glasspanes , and voltaic lights,
Crosses streets, brothels and cafes woken up from the night,
While the pensionaires discuss matters by poking canes on the sand,
It enters the squares where the musicians play mliitary bands.
While discussions and disagreements loiter as criminal gangs,
It breaks the waves and the foams while people drink in pleasure from a hollow huge can,
And in silence rest or move among women and men.
In this unreal city full with cafes selling wine, beer and limonade,
There are many alleys where the lovers may promenade,
There are many shadows where the devils kiss lips and necks,
Many dark passages where the travellers can eat, drink, and be happy,
And feel demons’ grand old-fashioned bebauchery.
There exist many other ways of Devil’s intelligent treachery:
Where the poor and hungry squatter in the city,
The mariners anchor ships beside the life’s darkened jetty,
The stomachs churn,
Beefs, shrimps and lambs damp the appetite in the frying pans,
Vegetables, drinks, fish and flesh moist the fattened bellies seeking pleasures of eating out in restaurants.
In this city in pain,
The sailors come to trade jewels , diamonds, and items of antiquity,
Take with them the blind passions, the wounds and the blood of life’s obscenity,
Bring back coffins stuffed with freedom of promescuity,
Float unconcerned in the pleasures of sunken life’s ephemerality.
This unreal city, where the houses are built with shinning stones,
Beyond the boundaries of the windows framed by the illusions,
Open and close the skeletons and bones.
In the limitless expanse of the sea where history rises and drowns,
Brings wreckage and inferno,
Where sunshine, deceptions, inceneration, tumults of conflicts and tornadoes,
In glasses of wine, in cups of tea ,
In chatter and patter,
In thoughtlessness and thoughts,
Create waves of nothing in everything ,
I see the drama of going down, before the tempest of awakening.
With the roads, the railings , the walls , the chimneys winding through the vision,
The musics veering,
The voices reverberating from caves to caves,
From the windows and terraces of the elegant hotels and marvellous facades ,
To the theatres, the halls and the corridors filled with lyric bells,
I see an Devil's angel flying from realms to realms.
DEMONS OF Science AND TECHNOLOGY