In a 1972 letter to Nizar Qabbani, Ounsi el-Hajj (1937 – 2014) writes that “the poet in the Arab world is without a country [watan]”, and describes the former’s poetry as “images for a poet hung on a cross made up of idiots, friends, and poets.” El-Hajj writes of a place where poets have been abandoned and crucified. When the Civil War in Lebanon broke out, el-Hajj retreated from poetry and found shelter in journalism. This poetic silence only ended at the end of the fifteen-year war with the publication of his last book of poetry, “The Banquet.” “The Banquet,” may seem like a chance for the poet to be reborn again. Its first poem, “Definition” (Ta’r?f), echoes el-Hajj’s first published poem, “Identity” (Hawiya). However, this rebirth differentiates itself from the myths of rebirth that had permeated modern Arabic poetry in the mid-twentieth century. El-Hajj resurrects the crucified poet to point blame in all directions. This paper will investigate the motif of prophecy in “The Banquet.” It starts with a definition of this new understanding of prophecy that el-Hajj deploys through images of crucifixion, resurrection, and the sacred, showing its proximity to Georges Bataille’s concept of the acephalic man. I then contrast the image of this new acephalic prophet-poet with el-Hajj’s other poetic protagonist, the female messenger who rewrites the genesis of the world in his long poem from 1975, “The Messenger with Her Hair Long Until the Springs.” I support these findings with references to El-Hajj’s journalistic writings during the war, showing a correspondence between his thought and poetry.