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“Ladies and gentlemen
blaise cendrars is not dead”

Devenue une icône du rock dès 1975, à la sortie de son album Horses, la chanteuse américaine Patti Smith s’est imposée sur la scène musicale mondiale par son style poétique et énervé, alliant beat et garage rock. Elle se destinait toutefois d’abord à la poésie, publiant des recueils avant d’enregistrer des disques. Grande lectrice, elle cite fréquemment le poète Arthur Rimbaud mais elle s’intéresse aussi à Blaise Cendrars, à qui elle consacre une lecture musicale en printemps 2020. En 1971, pour les dix ans de son décès, elle lui dédie un poème : Ladies and gentlemen Blaise Cendrars is not dead.

Ladies and gentlemen

Blaise Cendrars is not dead

That rummy you buried in such

grave ceremony was his own enemy

True the right arm gone

Blaise slashed it himself

some little Puff Box

run off at the mouth

was jack rolling our hero

with a wicked pack of cards

But Blaise a jack dandy himself

noted the error

(all the chips were on Puff Boxes’ side)

and like the great Hammurabi

Blaise cut him down

right hand for that bad hand of poker

He is alive in every marked deck

every poker chip

He has a pair of slick dice

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and he’ll wheel you straight to hell

When you dial round the black market

you deal with him

It’s our man who drops cigar ash

on the receiving end

It’s him crooning liquid music

and sonorous tin pan

through every cable line

linking every slob sister

swindler two-bit gambler

anyone slightly illegal or angel

has an ash in their vest pocket

and a kodak of that scoundrel

(vainer now one-armed crack face

than this mock hardy youth)

He has dragged me in and out

of every photo booth

praising in bad poetry

the Polaroid sixty second snap

Like a great epic film, we reeled the world

I assisted that cur in a marvelous hoax

in the gentle Midwest

Our wagon rolled in a dry bone state

Blaise posed as Louis Saucer

humble rainmaker prophet in rain boots

but when the clouds cracked

the white rain was liquor

and all of Iowa was soused with tequila

every pour sap that poured to the scene

of the great rain left drenched

and drunk to the teeth

Blaise curled that famous lip

and we laughed and laughed

and caused more mischief since

It was his ticklish fingers

that caused Mick the Jagger

to dance like a fish

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He shot lightning from the theatres

robbed the actors of their shadows

and backstage mirrors

It was his sassy diseased kiss

that laid Miss Universe with the mumps

the recession ? our man’s been pinballing

feeding opium into IBM

and sparing no one the bugger

would rob school children

The dirty shit still spits poetry

between his clicking spaced teeth

tracing aerial views of Greenland

land of the treacherous ice age

and the weeping permafrost

Gold mine dreams in Goat canyon

charting the nuggets where the moon slaps

then drunk with that special glitter

running lyrics in gold dust inks.

A fool hearty documentarian

his choppers have spun the globe

and for want of a straw hat

we were trapped knee deep

in the swamps of Panama

We suffered malaria

and as a result slaughtered

2/3 the mosquito population

in that hot hole

Christ it was a lusty battle

we were sick with laughter

and sick ourselves

runny assed and cunt with clap

hair red with crabs and lice

in our boots and we rolled

our own smokes

twisted up a few Panama reds

plotting the end of that wily insect

We danced to Vulcan

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our private god of flame

and sacrificed a few blood suckers

snapping their heads with our nails

which turned our hero slightly pale

Some years ago, he cried

I bragged the beauty of my hands

I have music beneath these fingernails

And true those fists never failed

to spiel whole logs full of

literature Roman a clef

and now it’s come to this

mosquito death hiss

Christ then it began again

the old fever and thirst for fire

with torches we ran whole lengths

of those Panama fields

and as the brush caught up

I cried out in my most disgusting French

Blaze on Blaise !

and that bastard burnt me with a cigarette !

Patti Smith

2021-1971