Blaise Cendrars

Newspaper

Christ
It's been more than a year now since I stopped thinking about You
Since I wrote my next-to-last poem "Easter"
My life has changed a lot since
But I'm still the same
I've even wanted to become a painter
Here are the pictures I've done and which hang on the walls tonight
For me they open strange views onto myself which make me think
    of You.

Christ
Life
That's what I've ransacked

My paintings hurt me
I'm too passionate
Everything is oranged up.

I spent a sad day thinking about my friends
And reading the paper
Christ
Life crucified in the wide-open paper I hold at arm's length
Wing-spread
Rockets
Turmoil
Cries.
You'd think an airplane is dropping.
It's me.

Passion
Fire
Serials
Newspaper
It's useless not wanting to talk about yourself
You have to cry out sometimes

I'm the other one
Too sensitive

                (August 1913)

tr. Ron Padgett

fr. "Nineteen Elastic Poems" (1919)
in Blaise Cendrars: Complete Poems
[Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press, 1992]

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