[Poem] Marinetti, F. T. - To my Pegasus

This poem was first publish 1908 in the volume The Sensual City. It's translated by Elizabeth R. Napier and Barbara R. Studholme and taken from Marinetti, F. T. (2002) Selected Poems and Prose New Haven and London: Yale University Press

To my Pegasus

Vehement god of a race of steel,
space-intoxicated Automobile,
stamping with anguish, champing at the bit!
O formidable Japanese monster with eyes like a forge,
fed on fire and mineral oils,
hungry for horizons and sidereal spoils,
I unleash your heart of diabolic puff-puffs,
and your giant pneumatics, for the dance
that you lead on the white roads of the world.
At last I release your metallic reins…You leap,
with ecstasy, into liberating Infinity!…

At the sound of the pound of your voice…
see how the setting Sun hounds
your bounding steps, accelerating its bleeding
palpitation along the horizon…
It’s galloping there, down in the woods…look!…

What is the matter, handsome demon?…
I’m at your mercy…Take me!
On the ground deafened despite its echoes,
under the sky blinded despite its golden stars,
I go fueling my fever and my desire
with sword blows right in the nose!…
And from moment to moment, I straighten my back
to feel winding round my quivering neck
the cool downy arms of the wind.

It’s your alluring distant arms that draw me!
this wind, it’s your engulfing breath,
fathomless Infinity absorbing me with joy!…
Ah! Ah!…suddenly the gangling black windmills
seem to be running
on their whaleboned canvas wings
as if on gigantic legs…

Now the Mountains get ready to throw
cloaks of drowsy coolness no my flight…
There! There! look! at that sinister curve!…
Mountains, O monstrous Cattle, O Mammoths
trotting heavily along, arching your huge backs,
you are outrun…drowned…
in the maze of mists!…
And dimly I hear
the whirring of your colossal legs
pounding the road in their seven-league boots…

Mountains with cool cloaks of azure!…
Beautiful rivers breathing in the moonlight!…
Shadowy plains! I pass you at full gallop
on this racing monster…Stars, my Stars,
do you hear his bounds, the sound of the pound
of his brazen lungs endlessly exploding?
The bet is on…with You, my Stars!…
Faster!…faster still!…
And no respite, and no rest!
Release the brakes!…You can’t?…
Smash them then!…
Let the engine’s pulse centuple!

Hurrah! No more contact with the filthy earth!…
At last, I break loose and fly freely
over the intoxicating abundance
of Stars streaming in the great bed of the sky!