Cyber Corpse 2
Exquisite Corpse - A Journal of Letters and Life
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Books by Mark Spitzer available at Amazon.com (click on the title for reviews and ordering info):

Collected Poems of Georges Bataille

Bottom Feeder

PITY
by Blaise Cendrars, translated from the French by Mark Spitzer

Man is alone--completely alone. As soon as he was born, he fell into a bucket.

It is raining tonight. It is dark out. I hear something in the silence, like heavy footsteps landing in puddles. They are the massive steps of clouds, moving in the sky. But is there still a sky? Everywhere, I feel the battered heart of Man crushed by the heavy footsteps of pain--that black, battered, crying heart, weeping with blood.

The wheels of madness turn in the ruts of the sky, splashing mud in the face of God! The clouds are startled from their stupor.

The moon rises. This is really the face of God. A desolate, beardless face. A bald head, completely round, with a mouth that looks like it's about to burst. Two tears can't even fall from his cheeks.

Wait, maybe this is my own head, swinging sad and alone in space.

A cloud moves.

Two bear paws land on my shoulders, and a carnal tongue way up there licks the eyes of God. I can't see anything more than my face in the heavens. A dog tongue comes out, hotly, from a cloud...

Something moves. A section of night crumbles away. Is this you, Woman?

Pity!

BLAISE CENDRARS is celebrated in France and other countries of the world for his exquisite corpus of poems, prose, radio plays, and more. His Transsiberian Poetry and novels such as Dan Yack are famous in the USA, thanks to Ron Pagett's translations. The poem translated here is a work of preSurrealist verse originally published by Apollinaire in 1914.

MARK SPITZER kills gross swamp creatures in the Atchafalaya Basin and translates French guys like Celine, Rimbaud, Cendrars, and Bataille.

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