1919

The Camera Eye (41)

arent you coming to the anarchist picnic there’s going to be an anarchist picnic sure you’ve got to come to the anarchist picnic this afternoon it was way out at Garches in a kind of park it took a long time to get out there we were late there were youngsters and young girls with glasses and old men with their whiskers and long white zits and everybody wore black artist ties some had taken off their shoes and stockings and were wandering around in the long grass a young man with a black artist tie was reading a poem Voilà said a voice c’est plûtot le geste proletaire it was a nice afternoon we sat on the grass and looked around le geste proletaire

But God damn it they’ve got all the machineguns in the world all the printingpresses linotypes tickerribbon curling irons plush-horses Ritz and we you I? barehands a few songs not very good songs plûtot le geste proletaire

Les bourgeois à la lanterne nom de dieu

et l’humanité la futurité la lutte des classes l’inépuisible angoisse des foules la misère du travailleur tu sais mon vieux sans blague

it was chilly early summer gloaming among the eighteenth-centuryshaped trees when we started home I sat on the impériale of the third class car with the daughter of the Libertaire (that’s Patrick Henry ours after all give me or death) a fine girl her father she said never let her go out alone never let her see any young men it was like being in a convent she wanted liberty fraternity equality and a young man to take her out in the tunnels the coalgas made us cough and she wanted l’Amérique la vie le theatre le feev o’clock le smoking le foxtrot she was a nice girl we sat side by side on the roof of the car and looked at the banlieue de Paris a desert of little gingerbread brick maisonettes flattening out under the broad gloom of evening she and I tu sais mon ami but what kind of goddam management is this?