Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Proud-pied April: C'est mon étoile

In 1916, the Swiss-born poet and novelist we know as Blaise Cendrars became a French citizen. He was not quite 30 and already a leader of the Modernist movement.

He had also lost his right arm fighting in the French Foreign Legion in Champagne. When the next war rolled around, Cendrars was with the British Expeditionary Force during the German invasion in 1940; the book he wrote about it was seized by the Gestapo before it could be published.

Like that was ever going to silence him.

Cendrars wrote many poems about his experience in World War I. I love today’s because of him likening his lost hand to a constellation.

“Orion”

C'est mon étoile

Elle a la forme d'une main

C'est ma main montée au ciel

Durant toute la guerre je voyais
Orion par un créneau

Quand les
Zeppelins venaient bombarder
Paris ils

venaient toujours d'Orion
Aujourd'hui je l'ai au-dessus de ma tête
Le grand mât perce la paume de cette main qui doit

souffrir
Comme ma main coupée me fait souffrir percée qu'elle

est par un dard continuel


It’s my constellation
It’s shaped like a hand
It’s my own hand high in the sky
All through the war through a gap I saw Orion
The Zeppelins that came to bomb Paris always came from Orion
Today it’s above my head
The long pole pierces the palm of the hand that must suffer
As my severed hand makes me suffer pierced constantly by a spear



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