‘The God Abandons Antony,’ from the Collected Poems of Constantinos P. Cavafy, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn.
“MY ARROGANCE KNOWS NO BOUNDS AND I WILL MAKE NO PEACE TODAY, AND YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY TO FIND A WOMAN LIKE ME” | Jenny Holzer, “Projections”
Important note : this is a projection by artist Jenny Holzer, but the text comes from a poem by Arab American writer Mohja Kahf, ’Ishtar Awakens in Chicago’. Holzer used Kahf’s work with her full agreement, I believe they’ve collaborated several times, but please check out the full context of the poem below.
My arrogance knows no bounds
And I will make no peace today
And you shall be so lucky
To find a woman like me
Today neither will the East claim me
nor the West admit me
Today my belly is a well
wherein serpents are coiled
ready to poison the world,
and you should be so lucky.
All I have is my arrogance
I will teach it to lean back
and smoke a cigarette in your faces,
and you should be so lucky
No I will make no peace
even though my hands are empty
I will talk as big as I please
I will be all or nothing
And I will jump before the heavy trucks
And I will saw off my leg at the thigh
before I bend one womanly knee
I am poison
And you will drink me
And you should be so lucky.
Christ! I know you can’t hear me, but I only did what you wanted me to. Christ! I’d sell out the nation, for I have been saddled with the murder of you.
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
dir. Norman Jewison, 1973
“Hung on my bedroom wall is the quote attributed to Joan of Arc: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” However my life unfolds, goes my thinking, is how I am meant to live it; however my life unspools itself, I was created to bear it.”
— Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias
