of Blaise Cendrars
At that time thence I was in my teens.
I was barely sixteen and already I could not remember most of my childhood
I was at 16,000 miles from my birthplace
I Moscow in the city of a thousand and three towers and seven stations
And I did not have enough stations and seven miles and three laps
For my adolescence was so ardent and so mad that my heart
Tower in turn, burned the temple of Ephesus as
or as Red Square in Moscow
When the sun goes down.
And my eyes lit up the old ways.
And I was already so bad poet
What I did not go through.
The Kremlin was like a huge cake
Tartar Crispy golden
With large almond cathedrals, all white
And honeyed gold bell ... An old monk
read me the legend of Novgorod
And I was thirsty I deciphered the cuneiform
Then, suddenly, the pigeons of the Holy Spirit flew over the place and my hands
also flew with rustling albatross
And this was the last echoes of the last day
From latest travel
And the sea
However, I was very bad poet.
I did not go through.
And I was hungry all day and all the women in pubs and all the glasses
I wanted to drink and break
And all the windows and all the streets
And all the houses and all the lives
And all the wheels of the cabs which turned into a whirlwind of bad blocks
I wanted to dive into a furnace of sword
And I wanted to crush all the bones and tear
all languages
liquefy And all these great bodies and naked in strange clothes that m'affolent ...
I foresaw the coming of Christ great red of the Russian Revolution ...
And the sun was a bad wound
that opens like an inferno.
In that time I was in my teens
I just sixteen and already I could not remember more of my birth
I was in Moscow where I wanted to feed flames
And I did not have enough towers and stations that studded my eyes
In Siberia the cannon thundered, it was war
Hunger cold fever and cholera
And the muddy waters of the Amur carting millions of carrion
In every station I could see from all the last trains
No one could leave because we no longer issuing tickets
And the soldiers who went would have liked to stay ...
An old monk sang me the legend of Novgorod