Marc Chagall

Portrait

He sleeps He is awake All at once, he paints He takes a church and paints with a church He takes a cow and paints with a cow With a sardine With heads, with hands, with knives He paints with an ox nerve He paints with all the dirty passions of a little Jewish town With all the heightened sexuality of the Russian provinces For France Without sensuality He paints with his thighs He has eyes in his backside And all at once it’s your portrait It’s you reader It’s me It’s him It’s his fiancée It’s the grocer on the corner The cowherd girl The midwife There are tubs of blood The newborns are washed in them Skies of madness Mouths of modernity The Tower like a corkscrew Hands Christ Christ is him He spent his childhood on the Cross He kills himself every day All at once he paints no more He was awake He sleeps now He strangles himself with his necktie Chagall is astonished to be alive Still

Blaise Cendrars 1913