The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

TRISTAN TZARA

Cosmic Realities Vanilla Tobacco Wakings

I

listen I’ll write a poem but don’t laugh
four streets surround us and we tell them light

elephants luminous in the circus
I don’t want you to be sick any more you know
but why why do you want to whistle this morning
telephone
I don’t want to I don’t want to and he is squeezing me TOO
TOO HARD

II

this morning
of copper your voice shivered on the wire

the woman covered with verdigris with ver-di-gris
dissolved like fog in the bell flowers
weep—rose of the winds—weep white
here is a light which could be black
flower

III

on steel salt lilies tell me again that your mother was good

IV

I am a line dilating and I want to grow in a tube of tin
I say that just to amuse you

V

not because I could have been a wax archangel
or evening rain and car catalog

VI

in the pits life boils crimson
to have some silence I want to count my joys