The wall is down. Incredulous we contemplate, through raw gateways, dawn in the West. You, the baker, me, the busdriver, there the student carrying a flag, there the woman who cannot forget or forgive; we move through rubble, through the searchlights, through the watercannon’s crazy rain.
This is the real dance; we stitch its paces over the Kaiser’s cobbles, in between the Weimar tramlines, through Hitler’s broken archways, empty squares, up and down the grim lattices of Russian tanktracks. Laughing, we invade the territory inside each other’s arms.
In 2015 Natalie d’Arbeloff and I had our collaborative work on Blaise Cendrars’ ‘La Prose du Transsiberien et de la Petite Jehanne de France’ published by the Old Stile Press, I translated the epic poem and Natalie created the illustrations. The ‘Trans-Sib’ went through 10 drafts before I settled on the version that went, with Natalie’s illustrations, to Nicolas Mcdowell at Old Stile for hand-printing.
For panoramic sweep and sheer chutzpah, Blaise Cendrars never quite matched the ‘Trans-Sib’. But his stature as an observational, surreal and quirkily lyrical poet is substantiated by much of his other output. Here are some translations of shorter poems by Cendrars. Most of them are still going through drafts and so are likely to be further tweaked.
CHINKS
Sea vistas
Waterfalls
Trees long-haired with moss
Heavy rubbery glossy leaves
Glazed sun
High burnished heat
Glistening
I’ve stopped listening to the urgent voices of my friends discussing
The news that I brought from Paris
On both sides of the train close by or along the banks of
The distant valley
The forest is there watching me unsettling me enticing me like
a mummy’s mask
I watch back
Never the flicker of an eye.
:::
CONTRASTS
The windows of my poetry are open wide to the
boulevards and their shop window displays
Radiate
The jewels of the light
Listen to the violins of the limousines and the xylophones of the
printing presses
The painter wipes his hands on the towel of the sky
Everywhere swatches of colour
And the hats of the passing women are comets
across the blazing evening.
:::
NEWSPAPER
Christ
There goes another year in which I haven’t thought about You
Since I wrote my penultimate poem Easter
My life has changed so much
But I’m the same as ever
I still want to become a painter
Here are the pictures that I’ve done displayed up on my walls this evening.
They reveal to me strange perspectives into myself that make me think of You.
Christ
Life
See what I’ve unearthed
My paintings make me uneasy
I’m too passionate
Everything is tinted orange.
I’ve passed a sad day thinking about my friends
And reading the newspaper
Christ
A life crucified in this newspaper stretched wide that I hold at arms’ length.
Wingspans
Rockets
Frenzy
Cries
Like a crashing aeroplane
That’s me.
Passion
Fire
Serial
Newspaper
No matter how much you try to stay silent
Sometimes you have to cry out
I’m the other way
Too sensitive
:::
STARRY NIGHT
I’ve spent most of the night on deck
The familiar stars from these latitudes stretch stretch across the sky
The Pole Star slips further and further towards the northern horizon Orion – my constellation – is at its zenith
The Milky Way like a luminous fissure expands each night
The Great Chariot is a smudge of fog
The south darkens increasingly before us
I can’t wait for the appearance of the Southern Cross in the east
To divert my impatience Venus has doubled in size and quintupled in brilliance
like the moon she trails her light across the water
Tonight I watched the falling of a shooting star
:::
KODAK
WEST
I. ROOF GARDEN
For weeks the elevators hoisted hoisted
crates crates of compost
Finally
By dint of cash and patience
The shrubbery is blooming
The lawns are a tender green
A vital spring gushes forth between the rhododendrons and the
camellias
At the summit of this edifice this edifice of bricks and steel
The evening
Waiters grave like diplomats clad in
white lean out across the chasm of the town
And the flowerbeds are alight like a million tiny multicoloured
lanterns
I believe Madame murmured the young man with a voice
tremulous with suppressed passion
I believe that we might do very well here
And with a sweeping gesture he displayed the vast sea
Its ebb and flow
The riding lights of its huge ships
The towering Statue of Liberty
And the mighty panorama of the city crisscrossed with shadowy
perpendiculars and glaring light
The old philosopher and the two billionaires are alone on
the terrace
Beautiful garden
Great banks of flowers
Starry sky
The three old men stand silently listening
to the laughter and the happy voices rising
from the bright windows
And to the murmurous song of the sea that mingles with
the gramophone
II. ON THE HUDSON
The electric dinghy glides noiselessly between the multitudes
of ships at anchor in the immense estuary flying
the flags of every nation of the world
The great clippers loaded high with Canadian timber
furl their huge sails
The iron steamers belch out torrents of black
smoke
A population of dockers from every race in the
world bustles within the turmoil of sirens and steam-whistles
from factory and train
The elegant launch is fashioned entirely from teak
Rising from its centre is a cabin resembling that
of a Venetian gondola
III. AMPHITRYON
After dinner served in the winter garden amongst
the groves of lemon trees jasmine orchids
There is a ball on the lawns of the illuminated park
But the principal attraction is the gifts sent
to Miss Isadora
Of particular note is a ‘pigeon’s blood’ ruby
of a size and brilliance beyond compare
None of the young girls present possesses a gem
to equal it
Elegantly dressed
And vigilant detectives mingle with the crowding guests
to watch over and protect this jewel
IV. OFFICE
Radiators and ventilators running on industrial gas
Twelve telephones and five wireless radio points
Marvellous electrical filing systems containing
countless industrial and scientific dossiers on
a multitude of subjects
The billionaire only feels truly at home within
this place of work
The huge windows look out over the park and the city
Each evening the mercury vapour lights shed
a soft blueish glow
It is within this place that demands to sell and to buy
sometimes topple stock markets across the wide world
V. YOUNG GIRL
A light dress in crepe de chine
The young girl
Elegance and wealth
Hair a tawny blonde within which shines a string of pearls
A face composed and calm reflecting both sincerity
and kindness
Her wide sea-blue eyes almost green are
clear and bold
She has about her the special downy-fresh and roseate tint that
suggests the privilege of the young American.
VI. YOUNG MAN
He’s the Beau Brummel of Fifth Avenue
Cloth-of-gold tie stippled with a froth of diamonds
A suit in metallic fabric pink and violet
Ankle-boots in genuine sharkskin each
button a tiny black pearl
He flaunts pyjamas of asbestos flannel another suit
fashioned out of glass a crocodile-skin waistcoat
His valet scrubs his gold coins with soap
He packs only brand new scented banknotes in
his wallet
VII. WORK
Criminals have just blown up the railway embankment bridge
The carriages have caught fire at the bottom of the valley
The injured swim in the boiling water seething from the
ruptured engine
Human torches run amongst the wreckage and the
jets of steam
Other coaches dangle suspended 60 meters up
Men carrying electric torches and acetylene cutters
clamber down the valley track
And in silence the rescue is swiftly organised
In the shelter of the bulrushes the reeds the willow the
waterbirds create a happy commotion
Dawn is long in breaking
But already a team of one hundred carpenters summoned by
telegraph arrive by special train to begin to reconstruct the bridge
Bang bang-bang
Pass me the nails
VIII. TRESTLE-WORK
If you come across a certain river or a deep valley
you’ll cross it by a wooden bridge until such time that
company revenue permits construction of one
in stone or iron
American carpenters are without peer in
the art of constructing these bridges
You begin by laying down a hard rock bed
Then you erect your first trestle
Which will support a second then a third the
a fourth
As many as it takes to reach the level of the bank
On the last trestle two beams
On the last two beams two rails
These audacious structures are neither reinforced by
a St Andrew’s cross nor by iron T-bars
The whole is held together just by a few supports and a few
bolts which determine the gauging of the trestles
And it’s what it is
It’s a bridge
A beautiful bridge
BLAISE CENDRARS MEETS MODIGLIANI. A film short from 1953.
As stated a few weeks back, I visited Russia at the end of the ’90s and witnessed briefly the beginnings of the silent revolution that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union, briefly presaged the advent of authentic democracy in a nation that had lurched bloodily from absolute monarchy to the dictatorship of the proletariat and then slid backwards into the bleak comfort of oligarchy.
My memories are of seemingly limitless space and breathtaking beauty. These two poems celebrate both. The first recollects a brief halt on the Trans-Siberian railway; the second a trip up the Chusovaya river and into the Urals.
BALEZINO STATION
At Balezino Station we disembark in silence under the great arch of night. First whispers leave breath hanging, shining like bright smoke. The old moon leans through cloud. A silver wind blows the stars about like spray. A tide of trees floods the half-dark, sucks at the line’s edge.
Motionless, we diminish, here at the junction between two hemispheres. Behind us bloodless territories of turned soil and domestic waters and beyond the taiga, the first forest to come tumbling out of the young dreaming of the world.
And now the thin edge of an eastern wind brings tears of resin, a scent of green disorder, a cataract of leaves and berries far ahead. Darkness crowds us back onto the train. Rocked but sleepless, we sit and stand by night-curtained windows, watching the dim images of ourselves watching the flying trees.
::::
BIRDS ON THE CHUSOVAYA
High flat sun, sour light draining like whey through muslin cloud. This bird’s hanging under shredded sails, turning on the axis of its hunger, reordering the sky. The berkut, summer eagle, sideslips into the treeline.
Where the river croons over stones, where we drink from clear channels, this bird scars the water’s skin. The swallow, stippling the ribbed water, turns on a wide wheel centred in a flat blue orbit.
Night’s sheet is torn at the corner. This bird has a knife in its voice. It slides on a wire, the owl, from maple to beech, yellow light around its black eye, acid on its tongue.
Night rain boils in the river. Young moon hooks clouds into ribbons and rags. This bird, the heron, rising from the reeds, climbs on its long arms from dark towards light.
My dad was a man of prose – a specialist: words used
like gardening tools to conjure shapes, to fashion patterns.
Language mattered: correspondence ran to pages –
letters to the council; ‘thank you’ cards to nurses
that read like testimonials. Even notes to the milkman
came across like billets doux to an old and valued friend.
And the writing: tiny box-shaped words in biro,
whispering in lines, or gathered quietly in the margins,
small-voiced but insistent, looking for truths.
When he knew that he was dying, he sat at the edge
of his life, scribbling a commentary. Twinges
from a cancer hotspot got a note immediately,
draped around the Guardian crossword clues
or squeezed between the calculations in his ledger:
where it hurt, for what duration, and, in imagistic detail,
the character of pain (like a voice, like broken glass, an ache
like winter rheumatism). And, towards the end, in his little diary,
potted phrases: “Slept well”, “Insomnia”, “Coughing still”.
For we who sat around his bed, it was the silence
that confounded. To the nurses plumping pillows, lifting cups
from which he didn’t want to drink; to waiting family
fiddling with the radio, sifting through his laundry,
he said nothing. All his words were spent just days ahead
of the breath that carried them. And then, the afternoon
of the day he died, the clouds drew back, late spring appeared.
Mum leaned back towards the window, smiled and said:
‘Look – a clear blue sky’, and we turned to see.
My father didn’t turn his head. Whatever sky he saw
was far behind in time, or maybe just ahead. Whatever sky it was,
no messianic veil, no chariots of fire obscured the view.
His great abundance, just like ours, was absolutely empty –
birdless, sunless, silent and ineffable, mocking the mad commotion
down below. He drew in breath, breathed out and said:
‘A clear blue sky’, floating the words on the sterile air
like leaves. He didn’t speak again; he died that night and,
one by one, the stars went out, a lexicon set free.
