Blaise Cendrars
from Nineteen Elastic Poems
18 The Head
The guillotine is the masterpiece of the plastic arts
Its click
Unleashes perpetual movement
Everyone’s more or less subconscious of Christopher Columbus’s egg
How he managed to stand it upright
Against all odds, one end squashed flat
An egg stable and unwobbling, worthy of an inventor
Archipenko’s sculpture goes one better
Egg with its ovoid still intact
Maintained in intense equilibrium
Like an immobile top
Upon its animated tip
The speed of it
Shedding iridescent waves
Zones of colour
As it spins within the deeps
Naked.
New.
Complete.
Translated by Martin Bennett
Page(s) 171
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