Blaise Cendrars
Fetishes
I
Muscles of mahogany
Two embryonic arms
A stomach that’s gone AWOL
Manhood at attention
II
Who’ve you got it in for
You who go about
Fists on haunches
Worryingly off-centre
Not quite as stout
As you might wish?
III
Knot of wood
Acorn-shaped head
Hard and refractory
A godling blank of face
Blank of sex
Cynically hilarious
IV
Envy has gnawed away your chin
Covetousness kept you erect
And thin
What you lack by way of a face
You make up for in geometries
Even trees could not better
Teenage icon from the Planet X
V
A man and a woman
Equally hard-featured equally nude
He less plump but just as strong
With hands on his tummy
That money-box mouth
VIII
I wanted to flee the chief’s umpteen wives
The stone of the sun has shattered my head
There in the sand
Nothing remains but my mouth
Wide open and conserving moisture
Like something for which a fit of Englishness
Strictly forbids translation
IX
Bald as a ball-bearing
He has only a mouth
This member dangling about his knees
Two truncated feet
[British Museum, London, February 1916]
Translated by Martin Bennett
Page(s) 164-165
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The