EASTER IN NEW YORK - BLAISE CENDRARS
To Agnès
Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera
Et rigor lentescat ille quem dedit nativitas
Ut superni membra Regis miti tendas stipite. . . .
‑FORTUNATUS, Pange lingua
Bend your branches, tall tree, relax your deep tension
And let your natural hardness give way
Don't tear off the arms of the highest King. . . .
REMY DE GOURMONT, The Mystic Latin
Lord, today is your feast day.
I read about your Passion in an old play,
And your good words and your anguish and your groans
That weep in the book, in quiet monotones.
An old‑time monk tells me about your death.
He was writing your story in golden script
In a missal balanced on his knees.
Inspired by You, he worked reverently.
Sheltered by the altar, sitting dressed in white,
He worked slowly all week, deep into the night.
Time stopped at the threshold of his retreat.
He forgot himself, bent over your portrait.
At Vespers, when the bells chimed above,
The good friar knew not if it was his Love
Or your Father's, Lord, or yours
That pounded loudly on the monastery doors.
I am like that good monk tonight, I am upset.
In the room next door, a being sad and silent
Waits behind the door, waits that I come asking!
It's You, its God, its me-it's the Everlasting.
I didn't know You then-and not today.
When I was little I didn't know how to pray.
Tonight, though, I think of You with awe.
My soul is a grieving widow at the foot of your Cross;
My soul is a widow in black-its your Mother
Without tears or hope, as Carrière painted her.
I know all the Christs hanging in museums;
But tonight You walk, Lord, next to me.
I stride quickly toward the lower part of town,
Hunched over, heart shrunk, spirits down.
Your wide-open side is like a big sun
And your hands throb with sparks all around.
The apartment windows are all filled with blood
And the women behind them are like flowers of blood,
Orchids, strange, bad, withered blooms,
Chalices inverted underneath your wounds.
They never drank of your blood collected there.
They have red on their lips, and lacy underwear.
White, like candles, are the Passion
Flowers, the sweetest in the Good Virgin's garden.
It was the same time as now, around the ninth hour,
When your Head, Lord, dropped onto your Heart.
l'm sitting at the oceans edge
And I remember a German hymn
That told, with very quiet words, very simple and pure,
The beauty of your Face in torture.
In a church, in Siena, in a burial vault,
I saw the same face, beneath a curtain, on the wall.
And in a hermitage, in Burrié-Vladislasz,
It's plated with gold in a reliquary behind glass.
Clouded cabochons were used for eyes
And the farmers knelt down to kiss Your eyes.
Veronica's handkerchief bears the print
And that’s why Saint Veronica is vour saint.
It's the best relic carried in procession,
It cures every illness and transgression.
It does thousands and thousands of other miracles,
But l've never seen any of those spectacles.
Maybe I lack the faith, Lord, and the goodness
To see this form of your Beauty's radiance.
Still, Lord, I took a dangerous voyage
To see a bervl intaglio of your image.
Lord, make my face, buried in my hands,
Leave there its agonizing mask.
Lord, don't let my two hands, pressed there
Against my lips, lick the foam of wild despair.
I'm sad and sick. Perhaps because of You,
Perhaps because of someone else.
Perhaps because of You.
Lord, the poor masses for whom you made the Sacrifice
Are here, penned in, heaped up , like cattle, in poorhouses.
Huge dark ships come in around the clock
And dump them off, pell‑mell, onto the dock.
There are Italians, Greeks, Bulgarians,
Spaniards, Persians, Russians, and Mongolians.
They're circus animals that leap meridians.
They’re thrown a piece of rotten meat, like swine.
Even such a lousy pittance makes them happy.
On suffering people, Lord, have pity.
Lord, in the ghetto swarm the hordes of Jews.
They come from Poland and are all refugees.
I know they held your Trial, Lord;
But believe me, they aren't completely bad.
They sit in shops, under copper lamps,
Sell old clothes, books, arms, and stamps.
Rembrandt loved to paint them in their cast-off clothes.
Me, tonight I pawned a microscope.
Alas, Lord, after Easter you won't be here anymore!
Have pity on the Jews in their hovels, Lord.
Lord, the humble women who were with you at Golgotha
Are hidden, in filthy backrooms, on obscene sofas,
They're polluted by the wretchedness of men.
Dogs have gnawed their bones, and in gin
They hide their hardened, scaly vice.
Lord, when one of these women speaks to me I wince.
I wish I were You, so I could love these prostitutes.
Lord, have pity on the prostitutes.
Lord, I'm in the neighborhood of vagrants,
Good thieves, bums, and fences.
I think of the two thieves who shared your torture,
I know you deign to smile on their misfortune.
Lord, one wants a rope with a noose on the end,
But they aren't free, ropes, they cost a couple of cents.
This old robber talked like a philosopher.
I gave him some opium so he'd get to heaven faster.
I think also of the street singers,
The blind violinist, the one‑armed organ‑grinder,
The straw-hat, paper-rose singer; surely
These are the ones who sing throughout eternity.
Lord, give them a little something, more than gaslight glimmer,
Lord, give them a little money right down here.
Lord, the curtain parted when you died,
And what was seen behind, no one has said.
In the night the street is like -a gash,
Filled with gold and blood, fire and trash.
The ones you drove out of the temple with your lash
Flog passersby with a fistful of evil acts.
The Star that disappeared then from the tabernacle
Burns on the walls in the raw light of public spectacles.
Lord, the illuminated Bank is like a safe,
Where the Blood of your death coagulates.
The streets empty out and then grow dark.
I stagger down the sidewalk like a drunk.
I'm scared by the shadows the big buildings cast down.
I'm scared. Someone follows me. I don't dare look around.
Closer and closer comes this limping step.
I'am scared. I'm dizzy. I deliberately stop.
A scary creep gave me a sharp look,
Then went on by, vicious, like a shark.
Lord, since you were King things haven't changed much.
Evil has made your Cross into a crutch.
I go down some rickety steps to a café
And here I am, sitting, with a glass of tea.
Their backs seem to smile, these Chinese,
Who bow, shiny as magot figurines.
Painted all in red, the shop is small
With curious prints in bamboo frames along the wall.
Hokusai painted the hundred views of a mountain.
What would your face look like, painted by a Chinese artist? . . .
This idea, Lord, at first made me less glum.
I saw you foreshortened in your martyrdom.
But the painter would have painted your torment
With a cruelty beyond the western temperament.
With your skin sliced off by twisted blades,
Your nerves ripped out by tongs and rakes,
They'd have put your neck in an iron choker,
Burned through your eves with a red‑hot poker.
Great black dragons with smoking tongues
Would have blown red flames into your lungs.
With your tongue ripped out, and fingernails,
You'd have been impaled on a sharp stake.
Thus you'd have suffered the vilest torture
Because there is no crueler posture.
And then they would have thrown you to the swine,
Who'd have eaten out your belly and intestines.
I'm alone now, the others have all left,
I'm stretched out on a bench against the wall.
I would have found a church and gone inside;
But there are no bells in this city, Lord.
I think of the silent bells-where are the ancient bells?
Where are the anthems and sweet canticles?
Where are the long services and where the litanies?
Where is the music and where the liturgies?
Where are your nuns, Lord, where your proud prelates?
Where the white dawn, amice of all your Saints?
The joy of Paradise is drowned in the dust,
The mystic fires have stopped glowing in stained glass.
Dawn is slow, and in this little sty
Shadows are crucified against the walls and die.
You look in the mirror: red flickering on black,
It's like a night‑Golgotha reflected back.
The smoke, below the light, is like a dingy sheet
That winds its way around you, head to foot.
Above, the dim lamp, like your Head,
Hangs down, sad, cadaverous, dead.
Strange reflections quiver on the panes . . .
l'm scared And I'm sad, Lord, sad to be so sad.
"Die nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via?"
"The humble morning light, shivering."
"Die nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via?"
"A wild whiteness, like hands quivering."
"Die nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via?"
"The augury of spring, in my breast, throbbing."
Lord, cold as a shroud the dawn slipped away
And left the skyscrapers naked in the day.
Already a giant noise resounds across the day.
Already the trains are lurching and roaring away.
The subways run and thunder underground.
The bridges shake with the railway's sound.
The city trembles. Cries and smoke and flames,
Steam whistles give out screechy screams.
A crowd enfevered by the toil that pays
Jostles and disappears down long passageways.
The dim sun, in the roofs' plumed confusion---it
Is your face soiled with spit.
Lord, I come back tired, alone, and utterly dejected . . .
My room is as empty as a tomb . . .
Lord, I'm am alone and I have a fever . .
My bed is as cold as a coffin . . .
Lord, I close my eyes and my teeth chatter . . .
I'm too alone. I'm cold. I call your name . . .
A thousand tops spin before my eyes . . .
No, a thousand women . . . No, a thousand cellos . . .
I think, Lord, about how miserable I've been . . .
I think, Lord, about ail the days that are gone . . .
I stop thinking about You. I stop thinking about You.
New York, April 1912
Blaise Cendrars
