The following is one of his best-known poems, The Banjos of Despair: Elles chantent, les benjohs hystériques et sauvages, comme des chattes énervées par l'odeur de l'orage. Ce sont des nègres qui les tiennent empoignées violemment, comme on tient une amarre que secoue la bourrasque. Elles miaulent, les benjohs, sous leurs doigts frénétiques, et la mer, en bombant son dos d'hippopotame, acclame leurs chansons par des flic-flacs sonores et des renâclements. The hysteric and savage banjos that meow like cats maddened by the odor of the storm; the sea which, swelling its back of a hippopotamus, applauds their songs with its sonorous twick-twacks and snorts--I understand the poet, I believe him. But, as I said, this is Marinetti's early poetry. How far he has "progressed" you may judge from the following quotation from his latest Words at Liberty, as it appears in The London Times: INDIFFERENZA DI 2 ROTONDITA SOSPESE SOLE + PALLONE FRENATI s p i r a c l f o i l l a o d m n i m n e e s c g d i i i n g t a f i n u l t m l i o e villaggi turchi incendiati grande T rrrrrzzzonzzzzzzante d'ue monoplano bulgaro + neve di manifesti. This "poem" is a description of a battle during the Turco-Bulgarian war; the style is supposed to be "polychromatic, polymorphous, and polyphonic, that may not only animalize, vegetalize, electrify, and liquefy itself, but penetrate and express the essence and the atomic life of matter." This is the dernier cri of Italian Futurism which originated in a--draff-ditch. Here is Marinetti's own "electrified" description of that memorable event: