| Contrasts | ||||||||||
| Blaise Cendrars | ||||||||||
| The windows of my poetry are wide open on the boulevards and in their display cases
Glitter Gemstones of light Listen to the limousines’ violins and the Linotypes xylophones The scrub painter rubs his hands on the sky’s towel Everything’s stained with color And the hats of the women who pass by are comets in the evenings conflagration Unity There’s no more unity All the clocks now point to midnight after having been set back ten minutes There’s no more time. There’s no more money. In the Assembly They’re watering down the raw materials’ marvelous elements At the bar The blue collar workmen are drinking red wine Every Saturday gamehen They’re playing They’re betting From time to time a gangster passes by in a car Or a child plays with l’Arc de Triomphe… I advise Mr Big to put his protegees up at the Eiffel Tower. Today Change of ownership The Holy Spirit on sale in the smallest shops I read with rapture swarms of calico Of poppies It’s only the pumice-stones of the Sorbonne which have never bloomed The Samaritan sign plows through the Seine And over by Saint-Séverin I hear The streetcars’ relentless bells It’s raining electric light bulbs Mountrouge East Station Metro North South water-buses world All’s halo Depth Rue de Buci they’re hawking L’Intransigeant and Paris-Sport The sky’s airdrome is now, ablaze, a Cimabue painting When in the foreground Men are Long Black Sad And are smoking, factory chimneys |
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