Blaise Cendrars

'The devil plays piano
His gnarled fingers titillate all the women '



Still, I was an extremely bad poet
I didn't know how to go about it
I was hungry
And all the days and all the women in the cafés and all the glasses
I so wanted to drink them and break them
And all the houses and all the streets
And all the wheels of the carriages, twisting like cyclones
over the bad pavements
I would have liked to plunge them into an armorer's furnace
And I would have liked to smash all the bones
And tear out all the tongues
And liquify all those big bodies, unfamiliar and naked under garments
that made me crazy ...
I foresaw the coming the big red Christ of the Russian Revolution ...
And the sun was an ugly wound
Split open like glowing coals.

extract from La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France

Brilliant interview from the paris review