LE REVE DE CASSANDRE LYRICS (english version)

FROM HAVEN TO HELL

August THE TWENTY SIXTH, TWO THOUSAND AND ONE, a makeshift boat, lost in the waters of the Indian Ocean, counts FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX passengers on board. Most of them have fled from Afghanistan and its taliban regime, established by the US and the Pakistan in THE NINETEEN EIGHTIES. After beaching in Indonesia, they put back to sea. They are now heading towards where they aren't expected anymore...

Hell yeah ! The die is cast. And it only gives out one more number drowned in the waters of shame.

Our lives - not even sold at a discount - are so reduced to that fucking alphabet: "T.E.R.R.O.R.I.S.T."

That’s the way they call the « nameless » and the « faceless ».

Then we laugh, and sing at the top of our lungs this verse, learned in a seemingly better life… until we die:

“I m not like them, and I can’t pretend

The sun is gone but I have a right

The day is done but I still have to run

I sink; my tomb will lie under the sea”                                                                       

I could die from drowning, from starvation or from the plague, I don't really care.

I fled from God, a stick in my hand. I defied the sea, reddened by the blood of the ancients, and the Sun Of August TWO THOUSAND AND ONE.

To be neither at home in their homeland, nor in yours, is the price to pay for you, for he who enters the world of the in-between.

What's the use in loving a thing which condemned itself to hatred?

God himself is powerless and, he resigned himself to let hell thrives on each side.

The smile of the doomed hovering over his lips, his eyes shut, abandoning his fate into the hands of history, Ismaël lets himself sink into a comatose slumber on one of the boards of the raft.

His dreams will lead him to the crossroads; there where lives are like feature lengths with no awards; where this child, whose fate he meets, will be his companion of misfortune, without his knowing. There where, as if to an imaginary friend, the child tells him his life story: 

9TH FLOOR

The big hand stopped on ELEVEN. Time is running out.

I engulf my slices of bread. The last crumbs smash onto the ground

The scent of toast fills her mouth, and perfumes the kiss she lays on my cheeks.

A dead time before history repeats itself. Its doors locked on MARCH, THE TWENTY-FIFTH, NINETEEN ELEVEN.

Outside the wind blows us away, like fucking straws. We run and we bustle.

There is this worm eating its way inside the Apple, slithering to the beat of the second hand,

Staring (and oblivious).

We let ourselves be engulfed. Only to be spat out TWENTY minutes later at the corner of the NINTH Street.

(School is over there) its doors locked at EIGHT THIRTY, and its teacher scolding us for being late...           

I don't like her, but Mom says "that's life, you'll probably spend long years doing lousy things, in places of death, down in the dumps"

She then talks about the Triangle, its doors locked from NINE to FIVE,           

Repressing the need to smoke, forgetting the urge to live.

 (The little boy to his mother :)

- "I'll blow you many kisses during recess, if you turn your eyes through the Triangle window"

- "But the NINTH floor’s doors are locked from NINE to FIVE", She says in a whisper blowing her away from my arms.

As the little hand lingers on FOUR, the laughs and screams of my chums will slowly fill the schoolyard. But I won't care..

I will look for her among the angels, and she'll be there!

In the deafening silence of the Triangle, engulfed in that red light, spitting out those breadcrumbs

which fall and smash onto the ground…

The scent of toast is still coming out of her mouth… as it puckers up to a kiss… as if to say goodbye.

A card, blown by the wind, lands at the kid's feet... He turns it over and smiles. Because he knows that means she finally managed to open the ninth door of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.

ROSE SCHNEIDERMAN

It's been a week since her mom left. He doesn’t know when she’ll be back. It seems that’s a long trip when one goes through the NINTH door. They’re now in the Metropolitan Opera House with ladies like her mother, and ONE of these flowers tells about the journey at the end of the night some angels are used to make:

“Too much blood has been spilled. I know so much it’s up to the workers to save themselves. (And) the only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class sedition

I’d betray these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk with friendly words.

The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth.

Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers.

The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred.

There are so many of us for one job it matters little if…ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SIX of us are burned to death.

You have some dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift.

But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable, the strong hand of the law beats us back…

Too much blood has been spilled. I know so much it’s up to the workers to save themselves. (And) the only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class sedition”

The kid holds the card tight in his hand, as if it was some friend's whom he had entrusted his life to. Even if he is too young for his heart and his head to understand that song, he knows everything is written in it.

THE PACIFIC SOLUTION

Now that the dream is over, slowly my eyes open. So weird those fucking visions,           

The hell if I know what did happen.
My cheeks no longer soil the boards of our « Grand Saint Antoine ». They now muck the bridge of one European ship.
Sarah tells me this Norwegian freighter, “The Tampa”, came to rescue us, as the sea was about to swallow us.
I lay my eyes for the first time on the shambles in this place. I'm told the name of the captain, Arne Rinman who took us all onboard, while I was out in purgatory.
We sought asylum to the Australians. But they sent us back to exile. Free to sail from haven to hell.
The goddamn article number THIRTY-THREE of the Geneva Convention. It won't apply to us:
- We are FIVE HUNDRED on a freighter chartered for FIFTY.

- Disease and famine will be our lot.

The so-called civilized promise we'll never tread on their lands, their own private place.
ONE always needs monsters to hate, windmills to defy, slaves to evangelize; it flatters the soul
of those who think they have one.
And who said that what TWENTIETH century humanists cannot forgive to the THIRD reich is not the crime per se, is not mankind's demise, but the crime against the white man –when they applied a colonial process to Europe instead?

STARKWEATHER

August the twenty-ninth, TWO THOUSAND AND ONE. I've been fasting and making penance on the Tampa for THREE days, on and on again, for Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah.           

The Australian net is tightening around our lives by the minute.                                               

The words have already been written: The Iliad will get the better of our Odyssey.                       

But who cares for the epilogue when the story is written by children left behind,

I will make up my own world. I am deciding. I'll start today.

Sarah and I will have the kind of world we wanna have.

FORTY years? That's too long! TEN years? That’s too long!

I'd rather live a few days with her who loves me for what I am, than an eternity longing for what I was.

And since "they" don't have enough of one life to curse and damn us, I’d rather laugh at the TEN plagues with her and spit on their commandments now.

On the deck, we behold the invincible armada, the great and most fortunate navy that faces us.

On their side, threats strike like bundles of matches, and foretell the swarm of furious bullets, sharp and pointed like stinging bees.

Faced to the heart snatcher, the dilemma is incontrovertible:                                   

Live like a beast or die like a man of good.

Live on love and sulfur, or croak fearing neither God nor man.

And during the assault that follows, the FIRST Australian gunstock that hits Ismael's temple makes him lose consciousness. At first it's a black hole, but soon the visions start again.

He recognizes the young boy he had left at the bottom of the Metropolitan Opera of New York a few years ago. He looks drawn now, and his wrinkles are marked by the years I.T.T. took him. He's sitting with some colleagues, around a table and a deck of cards.

I.NSIDE T.HE T.ROJANHORSE

The small hand stopped on NINE. Time is running out.

It is a matter of minutes now, the last breath of the "dictatorship".

For everything has been carefully wrapped, and put into the hands of our guard hounds

It is a matter of memories, too: what we were, what we should have been,

what we wish we could have seen in the eyes of the ONE the Triangle took away from you.

It is a matter of numbers, it is a matter of figures; so much simpler to discuss than a face:

ONE MILLION for Nixon, one more for Pinochet, and far more to protect our place

on top of the pyramid, on top of the species that will overpopulate hell.

(The Internationale will never be the human race.)

Hell, no ! 'twill definitely be the ONE of the telephone and the telegraph

Tonight, it's clear the Internationale shall never be the human race.

The hand turns to the rhythm of history as it should be written.

Allende will utter his last words in the silent turmoil of democracy.

"I'm not going to resign! I won't let go, I will pay for the loyalty of the people with my life.  I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment."

And when, on this Tuesday, September THE ELEVENTH, NINETEEN SEVENTY-THREE,

the bell finally tolls noon, everything will be over.

He puts down the trump 16, takes the last trick with it, and goes back to his office... On these last images Ismaël regains consciousness.

                                               

LET’S CROSS THE ACHERON

This is the end. Sarah’s sleeping quietly next to me, smiling as a sick child would do.

She has two red holes on the right side.

We won’t have had the world we were looking for…

But they never succeeded in submitting those they needed to hate.

The Australian military junta holds us at gunpoint now.

The terms of their contract are clear :

-       Either we accept to end up quarantined in Nauru

-       Or we'll be kicking the holy bucket, filled with sea waters, under the Indian Ocean. 

Resting now on my lap, Sarah’s face reminds me how so clear the terms of our own deal are now, clearer than they have ever been before… They’ll never succeed in submitting those they needed to hate.

REVOLUTION TONIGHT

ONE of the first English settlers' favourite games, played in southern lands,

would have been poisoning their hosts ;

to peel their skin off once they’re dead and use it to handcraft valuables.

I ask then for our own skin. If, at least, it would know the same "happy end".

But Adel, away during the assault, and appearing from nowhere, yells to me:

"We won't give them a chance, brother"

Cannons automatically turn to him.

The smile of the doomed on his lips, he swears to take them with us till hell’s gates.

Hope, as the wind, is blowing on the deck.

It’s caressing our cheeks with its name : RIOT

Adel has set into motion a weapon detonator, in the engine room.

It bears the seal 9/11.

Unable to handle this new deal, the enemy troops' terror can now be seen in their eyes. Because their salvation won't depend on a machine gun, or on an idea of justice which they intend to be the armed wing of ; but rather on their escape from the monster « they » made into their own image.

Deserting the ship as if the devil himself was chasing them away, they leave the passengers of the Tampa in the grip of the destiny they chose for themselves. And of this final act, only a card of tarot, stuck to a plank of the deck, will be the witness.

Ismaël, grabbing it with one of his hands, finally discovers what the young boy had read in it when, at the bottom of the Metropolitan Theater of New York, the angels had taken their ultimate bow.

DANCE ON YOUR OWN RUINS TOMORROW

The short hand has stopped on NINE.

There’s no hurry now.

The night, here, has already swallowed everything.

It won't spit us out before we're dead - It will only spit us out once dead

Cracklings get out of the radio (set). A story of planes, towers ablaze, and riots.

The end of the world might be close … and so much the better.

In the back of the room, laying down on the bed, she's all I have left.

Now her heart beats at the speed of the air, filled with explosions and stories that never end well.

« Sweetheart are you shivering ?! You'd shiver even more if you knew where we are taken to... »

The wind set ablaze the appartment, and from its burning breath, flows out a shower of stars.

It's coming as fire, washing off all the liars, leaving, like a gift from heaven, a blanket of ashes on the ground.

Daylight continues its incursion in the trenches of our lives torn apart by the painful feeling of letting everything pass us by.

It now floods the room, shrouding and lulling warmly (nothing but) her empty clothes...

« MAISON DIEU »

Fuck yeah ! The die is cast.

We'll pay with our lives our disobedience to the militias, whether they serve « freedom » or « propagation of the virtue ».

Whatever the god in whose name they pretend to act.

Whatever his color, his story and the face of tyranny he's the reflect of.

'Cause from Orient to Occident, god only speaks ONE language and always pronounces the same words: He's the monarch of all those he’s watching over. And his reign is not to be disputed...

Except for the ONE who has definitely renounced him and his messiahs on Earth.

Heavy clouds, full of bitterness, start to pile up on top of our heads. They have the color of charcoal, and they seal the least crack of hope which could slip from the sky… God, (you) damned us.

But we really don't care. We're not afraid of you anymore.

We know that we'll never tread earth again. We know that we'll never have to deal with your world again.

'Cause we definitely banned your moral, laws and commandments from our lives.

Of course, you'll rough up the sea, you'll blow a storm against us, you'll put our ship to fire and sword ... But no matter what, we'll stay, until the end, the masters of our own lives. Of our death.

We are the spark.

We are the sedition.

We are the ONES who chose death over surrender.

We are « the nameless and the faceless ».

Between us, who can believe this world is worthy of love?

What is the use in loving a thing which condemned itself to hatred?

God acts so that this world always comes down to this. And till the end,

he’ll enjoy letting hell thrives on each side.