ne pourrais plus employer cette expression « à bout »
en d’autres lieux aux plus extrêmes confins de l’indifférence
& du silence
terminal
tragique
Gaza Ghetto
depuis bientôt deux fois 365 jours progresse live sur tous
les écrans le projet halluciné d’un nouvel Hiroshima
robots-décapiteurs robots-ventriloques imitateurs
au beau milieu de la nuit de pleurs de tout petits
robots-hurleurs-d’ordres « sortez animaux humains »
derrière chaque bombe de 250/500/900 kg
chaque missile chaque balle tirée dans genoux cou
testicules tête
chaque explosion accueillie avec des cris de joie
Ordre suprême Détruire Raser Éradiquer Tuer
Tuer tout membre de la Tribu des A-MAL-EK
***
dévastation & carnage assumés justifiés au nom
du martyre de leurs aïeux
en Terres d’Occident & du Tout-Puissant qui aime par-
dessus tout certains de ses enfants
auxquels il délivre certificats de « bon sang » valant titres
de propriété & droit absolu de Conquête
***
Gaza Ghetto
2 millions d’hommes & femmes déplacés
des milliers de fois
attendant à tout instant dans un territoire
d’Outre-Monde la Mort
squelettes ambulants torturés avec pour arme
ultime
la Faim
celle qui se nourrit des organes dévore
les muscles brouille le langage dissout la pensée
en assembler quelques-unes comme soulever
de lourdes pierres la conscience même de soi
dans la rue un homme soudain s’effondre
une femme adossée à un mur chute lentement
des enfants ventres gonflés lèchent les traces de
farine sur sol des camions
grattent le sable à la recherche de lentilles
terre gorgée de leur sang la sève de Palestine
***
terrifiés les mots errent dans le labyrinthe de l’enfer
ne savent plus comment dire
cette ignominie l’effondrement de
l’Humanité
de la gorge jaillit un grand cri
Barbarie
« à bout »
au bout du bout de la fin au bout du bout de la faim
à jamais
un avant
&
un après
à jamais
GAZA GAZA
à bout, à jamais
Olivia Elias
Olivia Elias’s writing acts like a seismograph. Attentive to false pretenses, the poet uncovers the horror hidden behind everyday expressions, such as “at wit’s end”. Here is what she says about the origin of the poem:
“One morning when I woke up, as my mind was wandering, the expression ‘at wit’s end’ [à bout] came to me. It dawned on me at once that I could never use it innocently again. We never imagined we would be witnessing a genocide. Of course, there have been others since 1945. But this one—announced very officially, claimed, and methodically pursued with military, financial, and diplomatic assistance from the US Empire and Germany, as well as, to varying degrees, from the vast majority of Western powers and the mainstream media—is unfolding on all screens. A genocide being filmed and televised. Day after day, we see unbearable images of killing, destruction, and starvation. A ‘war’ that looks like a ‘hunt with hounds’ where the objective is to exhaust the ‘human game’ and force them to surrender. This poem came to me as a cry of indignation, but I also wanted to include elements showing the horror of what is happening.”
The main challenge in translating this striking poem lies in its concise style, which can be rendered into English thanks to a more fluid use of articles, easier construction of neologisms, and the ability to create compact verses. More than a documentary poem, “at wit’s end, forever” resembles a painting by Bosch or one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno. The enumeration of the atrocities committed confronts the powerful’s deliberately ignorant discourse on history and law. And the reader’s eye follows the thread of the poem through a maze that seems to have no way out. It is perhaps this conundrum that gives Elias’s words such power: how can one still write poetry at the very end of the end?
“One morning when I woke up, as my mind was wandering, the expression ‘at wit’s end’ [à bout] came to me. It dawned on me at once that I could never use it innocently again. We never imagined we would be witnessing a genocide. Of course, there have been others since 1945. But this one—announced very officially, claimed, and methodically pursued with military, financial, and diplomatic assistance from the US Empire and Germany, as well as, to varying degrees, from the vast majority of Western powers and the mainstream media—is unfolding on all screens. A genocide being filmed and televised. Day after day, we see unbearable images of killing, destruction, and starvation. A ‘war’ that looks like a ‘hunt with hounds’ where the objective is to exhaust the ‘human game’ and force them to surrender. This poem came to me as a cry of indignation, but I also wanted to include elements showing the horror of what is happening.”
The main challenge in translating this striking poem lies in its concise style, which can be rendered into English thanks to a more fluid use of articles, easier construction of neologisms, and the ability to create compact verses. More than a documentary poem, “at wit’s end, forever” resembles a painting by Bosch or one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno. The enumeration of the atrocities committed confronts the powerful’s deliberately ignorant discourse on history and law. And the reader’s eye follows the thread of the poem through a maze that seems to have no way out. It is perhaps this conundrum that gives Elias’s words such power: how can one still write poetry at the very end of the end?
Olivia Elias is a French-language, Palestinian-diaspora poet born in Haifa in 1944. She lived in Lebanon—where her family had taken refuge in 1948— until she was 16, then later in Montreal and Paris. Elias only began publishing in February 2015. Since then, she has published Ton nom de Palestine (Al Manar, 2017; repub. by La feuille de thé, 2025), Chaos, Traversée (La feuille de thé, 2019) and Ce Mont qui regarde la mer (Cambourakis, 2025). In 2022, she made her English-language debut with Chaos, Crossing (World Poetry), a bilingual and expanded version of Chaos, Traversée, followed in 2023 by Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry). Translated into several languages, her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in France and abroad. Chaos, Crossing was a finalist for the 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation.
Jérémy Victor Robert is a translator between English and French. He has published French translations of Etel Adnan’s Sea & Fog (Mer et Brouillard; L’Attente, 2015), Donna Stonecipher’s Model City (Cité modèle; joca seria, 2020), and Sarah Riggs’s Murmurations (APIC, 2021, with Marie Borel). Together with Sarah Riggs, he translated Olivia Elias’s Ton nom de Palestine. He recently finished the translation into English of her third book, This Mount Overlooking the Sea (Ce Mont qui regarde la mer; Cambourakis, 2025).
