Belladonna

I’m alone the way you’re the blind woman

of battlefield felicity

for you weave an odor of frogs and spiders

the secret of half-open graves of sterile chatter

of men heroes domestics

of the wise man

Pickpockets gladiators

worn-out by the dancers of a terrifying dream

nightmares in the ring red naturally

we have chosen the candid sensualities

of clowns limp lashed in the sky

where iron calms the dangerous locale

me I tremble with scintillating reflections

A coldblooded chief in the end human intelligence

whose greediness makes you so proud

keeps on teaching omnipotence

of phony new cavaliers extravagant

on the manure of glorious imaginations

with an identical point of the miserable mechanism

before the fainting fit

Dry palpable benches discharged of burdens

the old folks would stutter out good things for dying

‘til Xmas for parish priests whose magnificent piety

loses in waves the war of tears

where the imaginary soldier brays the darkness

the eye stumbles on infant boneyards

and calls for patches of women

A bizarre rectangular cigarette

stops cold the siren of anguish

provided that comrade God

a whale on His back with every step

torments the statue of formulas made

out of news of darkness belladonna

clawing a ten-cent candle

What is fair winners

today honor nothing more

there you have the sentiments and afar laughable

low that life deprived of habits

where the lamp goes out in the sobered night

to return and give birth on the seat

nonchalantly perceptible

I’ve no doubt public man of wit

before the police with an African saber

struck the wedding at Cana

I’d like better to risk feeling

deep down scissors what I say

and still longer have my puppet

which was the need for being bored.

Francis Picabia