Trans-Siberian Prose and Little Jeanne from France

I was in my adolescence at the timeScarcely sixteen and already I no longer remembered my childhood

I was 16,000 leagues from my birthplaceI was in Moscow, in the city of a thousand and three belfries and seven railroad stationsAnd they weren't enough for me, the seven railroad stations and the thousand and three towersFor my adolescence was so blazing and so madThat my heart burned in turns as the temple of Epheseus, or as Red Square in MoscowWhen the sun sinks.And my eyes shone upon the ancient routesAnd I was already such a bad poetThat I didn't know how to go all the way to the end.

The Kremlin was like an immense Tatar cakeCrusted with gold,With great almonds of cathedrals all done in whiteAnd the honeyed gold of the bells

An old monk was reading to me the legend of NovgorodI was thirstyAnd I was deciphering cuneiform charactersThen, suddenly, the pigeons of the Holy Spirit soared above the squareAnd my hands also flew up, with the rustling of the albatrossAnd these, these were the last recollections of the last dayOf the entire last voyageAnd of the sea.

But I was a very bad poet.I didn't know how to go to all the way to the end.I was hungryAnd all the days and all the women in the cafs and all the glassesI would have liked to drink and to break themAnd all the shop windows and all the streetsAnd all the homes and all the livesAnd all the wheels of the hackney cabs turning in a whirlwind on the bad cobblestonesI would have wanted to thrust them into a furnace of swordsAnd I would have wanted to crush all the bonesAnd to tear out all the tonguesAnd to liquefy all the big bodies strange and naked under the clothing that drives me to madnessI sensed the coming of the great red Christ of the Russian revolutionAnd the sun was a bad woundThat split open like a burnt up inferno.

I was in my adolescence at the timeI was scarcely sixteen and already I didn't remember my birthI was in Moscow, where I wanted to feed on flamesAnd they weren't enough for me the towers and the railroad stations that studded my eyes like constellationsIn Siberia the cannon roared, it was warHunger cold plague choleraAnd the muddy waters of Love pulled along millions of carrionIn all the railroad stations I saw departing all the last trainsNo one could leave any more for the tickets were no longer soldAnd the soldiers who were going away would have very much liked to stayAn old monk sang to me the legend of Novgorod.

Me, the bad poet who didn't want to go anywhere, I could go everywhereAnd also the merchants still had enough moneyTo go and tempt fate.Their train left every Friday morning.It was said there were a lot of deaths.One merchant carried away one hundred crates of alarm clocks and cuckoos from the Black ForestAnother, hatboxes, top hats and an assortment of Sheffield corkscrewsAnother, coffins from Malmoi filled with canned food and sardines in oilThen there were lots of womenWomen renting between their legs and who could also serveCoffinsThey were all patentedIt was said there were a lot of deaths over thereThey traveled at reduced pricesAnd had an open account at the bank.

Now, one Friday morning, it was finally my turnIt was DecemberAnd I too left to accompany a salesman in the jewelry business traveling to KharbinWe had two coups in the express and 34 chests of jewelry from PforzheimFrom the German peddler Made in GermanyHe had dressed me in new clothes, and while boarding the train I lost a buttonI remember it, I remember it, I have often thought of it sinceI was sleeping on the trunks and I was very happy to play with the nickel-plated browningthat he had also given me

I was very happy carefreeI made believe we were robbersWe had stolen the treasure of GlocondeAnd were going, thanks to the Trans-Siberian, to hide it on the other side of the worldI had to defend it against bandits from Ural who had attacked Jules Vern's traveling acrobatsAgainst the Khoungouzes, the Chinese boxersAnd the Great Lama's enraged little MongolsAli Baba and the forty thievesAnd those faithful to the terrible Old Man of the MountainAnd especially, against the most modern of allThe hotel ratsAnd all the specialists from international express trains everywhere.

And yet, and yet,I was as sad as a childThe rhythms of the trainTherailway marrowof American psychiatristsThe noise of the doors the voices the axles screeching on the frozen railsThe golden railing of my futureMy browning the piano and the cursing of the card players in the next-door compartmentThe splendid presence of JeanneThe man in the blue glasses who nervously paced the hallway and who would look at me as he passed byRustling of womenAnd whistling of steamAnd the eternal sound of wheels whirling in madness in the furrows of the skyThe windows frosted overNo nature!And behind, the Siberian plains the low sky and the great shadows of the Taciturn Ones rising and fallingI am asleep in a blanketCheckeredAs is my lifeAnd my life keeps me no warmer than this Scottish shawlAnd all of Europe glimpsed in gusts of wind from a full steam expressIs no richer than my lifeMy poor lifeThis shawlUnraveled on the trunks that are filled with goldWith which I trundle forthAnd I dreamAnd I smokeAnd the only flame in the universeIs one poor thought

From the depth of my heart tears riseIf I think, Love, about my mistress;She is but a child, whom I found soPale, immaculate, in the back rooms of a bordello.

She is but a child, blond, blithe and sad,She doesn't smile and never cries;But deep in her eyes, when she lets you drink from them,There trembles a gentle silver lily, the poet's flower.

She is meek and silent, and without reproach,With a drawn out shiver at your approach;But when I come to her, from here, from there, from a party,She takes a step, then closes her eyes and takes a step.For she is my love, and the other womenHave nothing but golden dresses on great bodies ablaze,My poor companion is so lonesome,She is completely nude, she has no body she is too poor.

She is but a candid, frail flower,The poet's flower, a slight silver lily,So cold, so alone, and already so wiltedThat tears well up in me if I think of her heart.And this night is like one hundred thousand others when a train presses on in the night The comets fall And a man and a woman, even when young, muse in making love.

The sky is like the shredded tent of a poor circus in a small fishing villageIn FlandersThe sun is a smoky oil lampAnd at the very top of a trapeze a woman makes a moon.The clarinet the piston a sharp flute and a bad tambourineAnd here is my cradleMy cradleIt was always next to the piano when my mother like Madame Bovary played Beethoven sonatasI spent my childhood in the Hanging Gardens of BabylonAnd skipping school, in the railroad stations in front of departing trainsNow, I have made all the trains run behind meBasel-TimbuktuI have also bet on the races at Auteuil and at LongchampParis New YorkNow, I have made all the trains run the course of my lifeMadrid StockholmAnd I lost all my betsThere is now only Patagonia, Patagonia, that suits my immense sadness, Patagonia, and a journey to the South SeasI'm on the roadI've always been on the roadI'm on the road with little Jehanne from FranceThe train makes a perilous jump and falls back on all of its wheelsThe train falls back on its wheelsThe train always falls back on all of its wheels

Blaise, tell me, are we very far from Montmartre?

We are far, Jeanne, you've been on the move for seven daysYou are far from Montmartre, from the Hill that nourished you from Sacre-Cur that cradled youParis has disappeared and its enormous flameThere is nothing but continuous ashFalling rainRising peatWhirling SiberiaHeavy rebounding sheets of snowAnd the bell of madness that quivers like the very last wish in the bluish airThe train beats at the heart of the heavy horizonsAnd your sorrow sneers

Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?

The worriesForget the worriesAll the railroad stations cracked askew on the roadThe telegraph wires on which they hangThe grimacing lampposts gesticulate and strangle themThe world expands elongates and retracts like an accordion tormented by a sadistic handIn the shreds of the sky, locomotives in a furyFleeAnd in the holes,The dizzying wheels the mouths the voicesAnd the dogs of misfortune that bark at our parcelsThe demons are unchainedScrap ironAll is in false harmonyThebroom-room-roomof the wheelsJoltsBouncing backWe are a storm in the skull of the deaf

Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?

You irritate me, of course you know very well, we are farOverheated madness bellows in the locomotiveThe plague cholera arise on our road like burning embersWe disappear in the war completely in a tunnelHunger, the whore, clings to the clouds as it spreadsAnd battle droppings are in rancid heaps of corpsesDo as she does, perform your craft

Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?

Yes, so we are, so we areAll the scapegoats have croaked in this desertHear the screech of this mite-infested herd TomskCheliabinsk Kainsk Ob Tai Shan Verkneudinsk Kurgan Samara Pensa-TulunDeath in ManchuriaIs our last stop our last lairThis voyage is terribleYesterday morningIvan Ulitch had white hairAnd Kolya Nikolai Ivanovich has been gnawing his fingers for fifteen days nowDo as she does Death Hunger perform your craftIt costs one hundred sou, in the Trans-Siberian, it costs one hundred rublesThe benches in fever and red flashes under the tableThe devil is at the pianoHis gnarled fingers arouse all the womenNatureWhoresPerform your craftUntil Kharbin

Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?

No butget the hell outleave me aloneYou have angular hipsYour stomach is sour and you have the clapThat's all that Paris has put in your bosomThere's also a bit of soul because you are unhappyFeel my pity feel my pity come towards me unto my heartThe wheels are windmills from the land of CocagneThe windmills are crutches twirled by a beggarWe are the cripples of emptinessWe roll on our four soresOur wings have been clippedThe wings of our seven sinsAnd all the trains are paddleballs of the devilFarmyardThe modern worldSpeed can't do much here butThe modern worldThe faraway places are just too farAnd at the end of the journey it's terrible to be a man with a woman

Blaise, tell me, are we very far from Montmartre?

Feel my pity feel my pity come towards me I will tell you a storyCome to bedCome unto my heartI'm going to tell you a story

Oh come! come!

In Figi spring reigns eternalLazinessLove swoons couples in the tall grass and hot syphilis lurks under banana treesCome to the lost isles of the Pacific!They are called Phoenix the MarquesasBorneo and JavaAnd Sulaweisi in the form of a cat.

We can not go to JapanCome to Mexico!On its high plateaus tulips bloomTentacular creepers are the hair of the sunCould almost be the palette and brushes of a painterColors deafening as gongsRousseau went thereThere he bedazzled his lifeIt is the country of birdsThe bird of paradise, the lyrebirdThe toucan, the mocking birdAnd the colibri nest among the black liliesCome!We will love one another in the majestic ruins of Aztec templesYou will be my idolA checkered childish idol a little ugly and grotesquely oddOh come!

If you wish we will go by plane and we will fly over the country of a thousand lakes,The nights there are immeasurably longA prehistoric ancestor will be afraid of my motorI will landAnd I will construct a hangar for my plane with the fossils of mammothsA primitive fire will reheat our paltry loveSamovarAnd we will love one another conventionally near the poleOh come!Jeanne Jeannette Pipette nono niplo nippletteMimi milove my dovedew my PeruSleepy me zeezeeMoor my manureDear li'l-heartTartBeloved li'l goatMy li'l-sin sweetHalfwitHallooShe sleeps.

She sleepsAnd of all the hours of the world she hasn't swallowed a single oneAll faces glimpsed in railroad stationsAll clocksThe time in Paris the time in Berlin the time in Saint Petersburg and the time in all stationsAnd in Ufa, the blood stained face of the cannoneerAnd the foolishly glowing dial in GrodnoAnd the perpetual rushing of the trainEach morning we set our watches to the hourThe train advances and the sun retreatsNothing to be done, I hear the echoing bellsThe great bell of Notre-DameThe shrill bell of the Louvre that tolled Bartholomew'sThe rusted peal of bells on the death of Bruge-la-MorteThe electric rings of the library bells in New YorkThe Venice countrysideAnd the bells of Moscow, the clock of the Red Door that counted for me my hours in an officeAnd my memoriesThe train weighs on the revolving platesThe train rollsA grasseye gramophone a gypsy marchAnd the world, like the Jewish quarter clock in Prague deliriously turns backwards.

Strip the rose of the windsHere murmur unchained stormsTrains roll on in a flurry on entangled tracksDiabolical paddleballsThere are trains that never meetOthers lose themselves on the wayStationmasters play chessBackgammonBilliardsPool ballsParablesThe steel-rimmed track is a new geometrySyracuseArchimedesAnd the soldiers who slit his throatAnd the galleysAnd the vesselsAnd the prodigious engines he inventedAnd all the slaughterAncient historyModern historyThe whirlwindsThe shipwrecksEven theTitanic, I read it in a magazineSo numerous the visual associations that I can't develop them all in my versesFor I am still a very bad poetFor the universe overwhelms meFor I have neglected to insure myself against railroad accidentsFor I don't know how to go all the way to the endAnd I'm afraid

I'm afraidI don't know how to go all the way to the endLike my friend Chagall I could make a series of insane drawingsBut I haven't taken notes on my wayForgive me my ignoranceForgive me for no longer knowing the age-old game of poetryAs Guillaume Appollinaire saysOne can read everything about warIn the Kuropatkin MemoirsOr in the Japanese journals that are just as brutally illustratedTo what end document myself?I abandon myselfTo bursts of memory

From Irkutsk on the voyage became much too slowMuch too longWe were in the first train to circle lake BaikalWe had adorned the train with flags and Chinese lanternsAnd we left the station to sad strains of the hymn to the Tsar.If I were a painter I would pour a lot of red, a lot of yellow on the end of this voyageFor I believe that we were all a little madAnd that an immense fever bloodied the worked-up faces of my companions on this journeyAs we approached MongoliaThat roared like a fire.The train had slowed its paceAnd I noticed in the perpetual grating of the wheelsThe mad accents and the sobbingOf an eternal liturgy

I sawI saw silent trains black trains returning from the Orient passing like phantomsAnd my eye, as a headlight, still runs after these trainsIn Talga 100,000 wounded were agonizing for lack of careI visited the hospitals of KrasnoyarskAnd in Khilok we came across a long convoy of soldiers gone madI saw in the lazarettos the gaping gashes wounds that bled to the boneAnd amputated limbs danced around or soared through the raucous airFire was on all faces in all heartsIdiotic fingers were rapping on all windowpanesAnd under the force of fear the stares burst open like abscessesIn all the stations all the wagons burnedAnd I sawI saw trains with 60 engines escaping at full steam hounded by horizons in heat and flocks of crows that afterwards took hopeless flightDisappearingIn the direction of Port Arthur.

In Chita we had a few days of restA five-day stop since the tracks were blockedWe spent it with Mister Yankelivitch who wanted to give me his only daughter in marriageThen the train took off.Now it was I who took a seat at the piano and I had a toothacheWhen I wish to I can still recall that interior the father's store and the daughter's eyes who in the evenings came to my bedMussogorskyAnd theliederof Hugo WolfAnd the Gobi sandsAnd in Khailar a caravan of white camelsI am sure I was drunk for more than 500 kilometersBut I was at the piano and that's all I could seeWhen you travel, you should close your eyesSleepI would have liked so much to sleepI recognize all the countries with my eyes closed by their odorAnd I recognize all the trains by their rumblingEuropean trains have four beats while those in Asia are at five or seven beatsOthers move softly and these are lullabiesAnd there are those that in the monotonous noise of their wheels remind me of Maeterlinck's heavy proseI've deciphered all the wheels' chaotic texts and I've assembled the disparate elements of a violent beautyThat I possessAnd which compels me.

Tsitsihar and KharbinI am not going any furtherIt is the last stationI got off at Kharbin as they had just set fire to the Red-Cross office.

O ParisLarge glowing hearth with the crossed pokers of your streets and your old homes that hunch over warming themselvesLike forefathersAnd here are the posters, red and green multicolored as my brief yellow pastYellow the proud color of French novels sold abroad.I love to squeeze into moving buses in big citiesThose of the Saint-Germain-Montmartre line bring me to the assault of the HillThe motors bellow like golden bullsThe bovine twilight grazes the Sacre CurO ParisCentral station last stop of desire crossroads of unrestOnly the merchants of color still have a little bit of light on their doorsThe International Company of Sleeping Cars and Europeans Express Trains has sent me their brochureIt is the most beautiful church in the worldI have friends who surround me like guardrailsThey are afraid that when I leave I won't returnAll the women I have met tower on the horizonsWith gestures full of pity and the sad look of traffic lights in the rainBella, Agnes, Catherine, and the mother of my son in ItalyAnd the one, the mother of my love in AmericaThere are siren screams that rip my soulThere in Manchuria a stomach still throbs as if in laborI would likeI would like to have never gone travelingThis evening a great love torments meAnd despite myself I think of little Jehanne from France.It is on an evening of sadness that I wrote this poem in her honor.JeanneThe little prostituteI am sad I am sadI will go to the Lapin Agile to again remember my lost youthAnd drink a few glassesThen I will return alone

Paris

City of the inimitable Tower the great Gallows and the Wheel.Blaise CendrarsParis, 1913