Vladimir Mayakovsky

I'd like to meet:

I Love

USUALLY SO

Any man born is entitled to love,
but what with jobs,
incomes,
and other such things,
the heart's core grows harder
from day to day.
The heart wears a body;
the body - a shirt.
Even that's not enough!
Someone-
the idiot!-
manufactured stiff cuffs
and clamped starch on the chest.
Aging, people suddenly have second thoughts.
Women rub in powder and rouge.
Men do cartwheels according to Muller's system.
But it's too late.
The skin proliferates in wrinkles.
Love flowers,
and flowers
and then withers and shrinks.

AS A BOY

I was gifted in measure with love.
Since childhood,
people
have been drilled to labour.
But I
fled to the banks of the Rion
and knocked about there,
doing absolutely nothing.
Mamma chided me angrily:
"Good for nothing!"
Papa threatened to belt me.
But I,
laying my hands on a false three-rouble note,
played at "three leaves" with soldiers under a fence.
Unconstricted by shirt,
unburdened by boots,
I was baked in the sultry sun of Kutaisi.
To the sun I proffered now my back,
now my belly,
until the pit of my stomach ached.
The sun was astonished:
"I can hardly see him, the brat!
Yet he's got
a little heart too.
He does his small best!
Where,
in less than a yard
is there place
for me
and the river
and the hundred-mile stretch of rock?!"

AS A YOUNG MAN

Youth has a mass of occupations.
We hammer grammar into the thickest skulls.
But I
was expelled from the fifth class.
Then they began to shove me into Moscow’s prisons.
In your
cosy
little apartment world,
curly-headed lyricists sprout in bedrooms.
What do you find in these lapdog lyricists?!
As for me,
I learned
about love
in Butyrki.
Does nostalgia for the Bois de Boulongne mean anything?!
Or to gaze at the sea and sigh?!
In the funeral parlour,
I
fell in love
with a keyhole of cell 103.
Staring at the daily sun,
people ask:
“How much do they cost, these little sunbeams?”
But I
for a yellow patch
of light jumping on the wall
would then have given everything in the world.

MY UNIVERSITY

French you know.
You divide.
Multiply.
You decline wonderfully.
Well, decline then!
But tell me-
can you sing in tune
with a house?
Do you understand the idiom of tramcars?
The human fledgling-
barely out of the egg-
grasps at a book,
at quires of exercise paper.
But I learned my alphabet from signboards,
leafing through pages of iron and tin.
People take the earth,
trim
and strip it-
and they teach you a lesson.
It’s just a tiny globe.
But I
learned my geography with my ribs-
no wonder I
flop down to earth
for my night’s rest!
Painful questions torment the Ilovaiskys:
Did Barbarossa have a red beard?-
What if he did!
I do not rummage in dust-laden rubbish-
I know all the histories in Moscow!
They take Dobrolyubov (to hate evil),
but the name objects,
the family whimpers.
Since childhood,
I’ve always hated
the overfed,
for I always had to sell myself
for a meal.
They learn
to sit down-
to please a lady;
their trifling thoughts clink against tinpot foreheads.
But I
talked
only to houses.
Water towers were my only company.
Listening closely with their dormer windows,
the roofs caught what I through in their ears.
afterwards,
they prattled
about the night
and about each other,
wagging their weathercock tongue.

ADULTS

Adults have much to do.
Their pockets are stuffed with roubles.
Love?
Certainly!
For about a hundred roubles.
But I,
homeless,
thrust
my hands
into my torn pockets
and slouched about, goggle-eyed.
Night.
You put on your best dress.
You relax with wives and widows.
Moscow,
with the ring of its endless Sadovayas,
choked me in its embraces.
The hearts
of amorous women
go tic-toc.
On a bed of love the partners feel ecstatic.
Stretched out like Passion Square,
I caught the wild heartbeat of capital cities.
Open wide-
my heart nearly on the surface-
I unfolded myself to sun and puddle.
Enter me with your passions!
Climb in with your love!
Now I have lost control of my heart.
I know where lodges the heart in others.
In the breast- as everyone knows!
But with me
anatomy has gone mad:
nothing but heart
roaring everywhere.
Oh, what a multitude
of springtimes
has been packed into my feverish body in these years!
Their burden unspent is simply unbearable.
Unbearable not figuratively,
in verse,
but literally.

WHAT HAPPENED

More than possible,
more than necessary-
as though
in sleep sagging down in poetic delirium-
the lump of the heart has grown huge in bulk:
that bulk is love,
that bulk is hate.
Under the burden
my legs
walked shakily-
as you know,
I am
well built-
and yet,
an appendage of the heart, I dragged myself about,
hunching the vast width of my shoulders.
I swell with the milk of verse-
there’s no pouring it forth-
anywhere, it seems- and it brims me anew.
I am exhausted by lyricism-
wet nurse of the world,
the hyperbole
of Maupassant’s archetype.

I CALL

I raised like a strong man,
carried like an acrobat.
As electors are called to a meeting,
as the tocsin
summons village folk
to a fire-
so I called out:
“Here it is!
Here!
Take it!”
Whenever
this clumsy bulk groaned-
without looking,
through dust,
through dirt,
through snowdrift,
the ladies
shied away from me
like a rocket:
“We’d prefer something smaller;
we’d rather have a tango..”
I cannot bear the burden-
but I bear it.
I should like to throw it down-
but I know
I shall not throw it down!
My ribs’ staves will not stand the thrust.
The cage of the chest cracks under the strain.

YOU

You came—
determined,
because I was large,
because I was roaring,
but on close inspection
you saw a mere boy.
You seized
and snatched away my heart
and began
to play with it—
like a girl with a bouncing ball.
And before this miracle
every woman
was either astounded
or a maiden inquiring:
“Love such a fellow?
Why, he’ll pounce on you!
She must be a lion tamer,
a girl from the zoo!”
But I was triumphant,
I didn’t feel it—
the yoke!
Oblivious with joy,
I jumped
and leapt about, a bride-happy redskin,
I felt so elated
and light.

IMPOSSIBLE

I can’t do it alone-
carry the grand piano
(and even less,
the safe).
But if I can’t manage the safe
or the grand piano,
then,
having retrieved it,
how can I carry my heart.
Bankers know:
“We’re boundlessly rich.
If we don’t have enough pockets,
we can stuff our safes.”
In you—
I have hidden
my love,
like riches in steel,
and I walk about
exalting, a Croesus.
And,
if desire insist
I can draw out a smile,
a half-smile,
even less,
and, in company reveling,
in half a nights expend
some fifteen roubles’ worth of lyrical change.

IT’S THAT WAY WITH ME

Fleets! They too flow to port.
A train likewise speeds to a station.
And I, even more, am pulled and tugged,
towards you—
for I love.
Pushkin’s covetous knight
visits his cellar to rummage and gloat.
In the same way my beloved,
I return to you.
This is my heart,
and I marvel at it.
People gladly go home
and scrape off their dirt,
washing and shaving.
In the same way
I return to you—
for in going towards you,
am I not returning home?!
Man of earth in earth is laid.
We return to our destination.
Thus steadily
I am drawn back
towards you
as soon as we part
or stop seeing each other.

CONCLUSION

Neither quarrels,
nor miles,
can wash away love.
It has been deeply thought,
tested,
checked.
Solemnly raising index-lined verse,
I swear-
I love
immutably, truly!