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