ES Glad,! John and Weissbort, Daniel (Eds.). RUSSIAN POETRY: THE MODERN PERIOD. Towa: Univ. of Iowa} Press, 1978, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY 1893-1930 4 CLOUD IN TROUSERS ‘Your choughe 18 in those brains of oatmeal like a bloated functionary on an oily sofa — T'H mock ie to death with a dripping shred of my heart and nourish my bieing concempt. No gray hair in my soul, no doddering tenderness, 1 rock the world with the chunder of my voice, strolling, looking good — ‘wenty-ewo, Sensitive ones, yout love is violin solo, ‘cruder ones use a drum. Bur you can't be like me, inside out, all lips. Come out and learn, prim offcialdom of the angelic leagues! You ‘00, ladies, thumbing your lips like a cook his cookbook. If you prefer, ll be pure raging meat, or if you prefer, 1s the sky changes tone, TH be absolutely tender, ‘not a man, but a cloud in trousers! Flowery Nice doesn't exist! ‘Again I sing co praise men used as hospital bed ‘women wornout as clichés ‘You think I'm crazy? It's malaria? Te happened. Ic happened in Odessa, "See you at four,” Maria said, Bighe Nine, Tea, ‘Then the ewilight spun around from the window and stomped off into nightmarish darkness, frowning, decemberish, Behind ies dilapidated back, snickeriog candelabras, ‘You wouldn’e recognize me, a sack of gristly meat, moaning, writhing. Wihae can such a jee want? A tump's desires are infinite! Viadimie Mayakovsky 9)Who cares if Tm made of bronze, if my heare is lined with icon? ‘Av night L only wane ro muffle my clang. in sofe woman, And s0, huge, T hunched by the window, iy forehead melting the glass Love, no or yes? ‘And what kind, big or ceeny? From my body how could it be big? 1 would have to be a quiet litle lovelet that’s shy of noisy eraffc, that loves horse-tram bells (On and on, my face muzzling the rain's pocked face, I waie, deenched by the city’s splashing surf Midnighe races, grabs, stabs, Bet rid of himt ‘The ewelfth stroke fll, 1 chopped-off hea. Gray raindrops on the windowpanes howling, 1 heap of grimaces, like all che gargoyles of Notre Dame 10. Vladimir Mayakovsky ‘Thav's it ‘The hell wich her, 1 yell cll my mouth buses, Quiedy, T heard twitch like a sick man hopping out of bed; at fist i barely sticed, then pattered around, uneasy, then a few more, ‘ap dancing fanically, ‘The first Roor ceiling crashed. Nerves! Bis, lieele, millions! Galloping like mad Uill heir knees givel ‘Through the room, night oozed on and on, ‘ooze the heavy eye can’t heave out of. ‘The hotel doors suddenly banged, chomping unevenly. In you rushed, sharp as "Here! toreuring your suede gloves you said, "Guess what? I'm getting married Vladimir Mayakovsky 11Go gee martied, Big deal. Who cates? I'm perfectly calm, pulee Remember you used to say, “Jack London, ‘money, love, 1 only saw 2 Giaconda thae had to be stolen! ‘You were stolen HL gamble for love 9 my beows & fiery arch. So what! Hobos can live in burne-oue houses ‘You mock me? "A beggar hus no money, tnd you have no ‘emeralds of madness Now listen! ‘They mocked Vesuvius, and Pompeii was descroyed! Atceation ‘geaclemen, dlilettances in sacrilege, slaughcer — have you seen the epitome of horror, Vladimir Mayakovsky sy face when 1 lm? am quite cal ‘And I feet Fe is to0 small for me. Some other body is busting out Hello? Who is ie? Momma? ‘Momma! Your son is wonderfully il! Momma! His heart is on fire. Tell Lyuda and Olga their brocher is trapped. Each word, ‘ever the jokes, that his scorching mouth pukes up, hhurls itself out like @ naked whore from a burning brothel, A whit of burning flesh! Here they come! Gliccering helmets! Bur please, no heavy boots. ‘Tell the firemen co climb tenderly on a burning heart Here, let me. Tl pump bartels of tears. push against the ribs. Tm jumping! I'm jumping! They fell in ‘You can’t jump our of your heart. jumping! I'm jumping! Vladimir Mayakovsky 13‘Through cracked lips, from my smoldering face, cindery kisses leap up. Momma! 1 ean't sing, In the church of my heart ehe choit’s in flames Charred images of numbers and words rush from my skull like children from a flaming building. Feat, rabbing ac the sky, lifted high, the Lusiani 's burning arms. Inco quiet apartments ‘where people are crembling, s hundred-eyed fire roars from the docks. My lase ery — ‘roan through the ages, Tm on fie! chan che greatest On everything before me T stamp nibil I won’e read anyching acall, ‘A book? What's thar? Here's how I used to think you made a book: 1 poet comes along, ‘mouth half open, inspired, then suddenly the idiot buss into song — fancy that! 14 Vladimir Mayakovsky Buu, it seems, before he starts his song, he cramps around, calloused from fermencation, with the dull fish of imagination flopping about in the heart's swamp. ‘And while his soup of love and nightingeles is boiling, cheumming wich thyme, the tonguelessstree’s in corture, tunable co make a sound. We're provd, We life up towers of Babel, but god scavters all speech, Brinds cities inco fields. Quietly the street shoves pain along. Out of ies guller a yell sticks up. Fae taxis and bony cabs swell, stuck in ies ciroat. les tubercular chest is pedeserianed flat, ‘The city barricades the street with night Bue still, when the street coughed up its phlegm ‘onto the square, shoving that porch off its throat, ie seemed a choie of archangels ctied ‘god was plundered, now he comes to punish! Bue the street sat down and yelled, “Lets stuff our bellies!” Krupps and baby Keupps pine war brows on the city, buc in ite mouth dead words rot, Viadimie Mayakovsky 15only cwo grow fat bastard” and I think the ochee sch.” Poets, sopped with lamentation, rush from the street, theie long hair macced, “how can chose two words sing of maidens and love and tiny flowers in the dew’ After he poets come ehousands of students, whores, Hey gentlemen! Stop! You're nor beggars, don't beg! We're strong and cake huge strides ‘We mustn't listen, must rip them apart, those who are glued as a special bonus to every double bed Should we kneel and beg chem “help me!” beg for hymas and oratorios? We who are the creators in a blazing hymna — ies and laboratories, in the noite of fact ‘Who gives a damn for Faust in his occule cocker 16 Vladimir Mayakovsky slithering along the parquet of heaven: wich Mephistopheles! T know nail in my boot is worse than Goethe's fantasies! 1, the exereme golden mouth, whose every word ives birch to the soul, and christens the body, I say co you, the least living speck is worth more than anything I'll ever do. Listet Today brasslipped Zarathustras preach, rushing around, moaning and wailing We, cut faces crumpled like sees, oc lips dangling lke chandeles, inmaces of leper cic, where dirty gold breeds leper’ sores, ore ate fr purer than Venetian sro, vase by ten and sun! Dama Homer and Ovid for not having made characters like us, pocked and sooty T know the sun would dim seeing the golden sparkle of our souls! ‘Muscle and sinew work better than prayer. Do we have to beg time for charity? We each of us — Vladimir Mayakovsky 17hold the world’s reigns in our five fingers Saying ehis brought me to my Golgothas in the auditoriums of Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, and Kiev, where there wasn’ one who dida'e yal: ‘Ceucily him! Ceucity him! Bu, people, even you who have wounded me, you're closer and dearer chan anything, Haven't you seen a dog licking the hand chat whips i mockery of my cribe, like some long ditty joke, 1 see the one no one sees crossing che mountains of time, ‘Where men's vision fils, I see 1916 come, leading hungry masses wearing the thorny ctown of revolution, Tam with you, 1, his precursor, 1 am wherever there is pain, 1 nail myself co every tear. ‘There is no more that can be forgiven, I've cauterized once-tender souls, 1 thing far more dificult than taking a million Bast ‘And when he actives, 18 Vadimie Mayakovsky 1 Davi Bucyuk (1882) Resi announced by rebellion, and you geeet your saviour, then Tl rip our my soul, stamp on ie co make it big, and hand ic co you, bloody, for a fag. Ab, what's this? Why do dirty fses shake at clear joy? Ie came the choughe of insane asylums came and hung ies cuetains in my head. And — 1 battleship, sinking, men choking, diving out open hatches — s0 Burlyuk," teerifed, crawled ‘out of his owa gashed eye. Nearly dieeying his vary eyelid, he drawled ou, stood, walked, and unusually cender for one so fit, proclaimed, am Good, when a yellow shice keeps the soul from having to answer questions inc nd Foti poet Viadimie Mayakovsky 19Good to yell when thrown to the gallows “Drink Van Houten's Cocoa! ‘That ‘chunderous fash is woreh more ddan anything Lurching ehtough cigar smoke, like a liqueut glass, Ihete comes Severyanin's? deunken face. ‘You call yourself a poet, squeaking like a little gray quail! Todey brass knuckles will smash the world inside your skull! You, troubled by only one thought, “Is my dancing smooth enough?” Look at me enjoying myself, an ordinary pimp and gambler. On you, pickled in love, wetting the centuries with weeping, Feurn iy back, using the sun as monocle for my bulging eye Dressing. up incredibly, 2 Ino Severanin (887-1940), Resian Future poe 20 Vladimir Mayakovsky 1M serut over the world, spreading tuin of joy, and in front of me, like a pug on a leash, my per, the Emperor Napoleon, ‘The world will lie on her back, meat quivering, eager things will come to life, lips penetling forever, ‘Umm umm wmmn Suddenly, clouds and various cloud-like things in the sky will kick up a fuss, 5 if white-suited workers were dispersing afer calling an embitcered serike against the sky. Enraged thunder crawled out of the clouds, its huge noseels snorting feskily, and for a second, the sky's face ewitched like the iron Bismarck, grimacing, ‘And someone, tangled in cloudy chains, hheld out a hand to che cafe and somehow ic seemed feminine, and gentle somehow, and somehow like a gun carviage ‘You think the sun's kindly patting the cafe's cheek? No its General Galliffee? coming to cut the rebels down! ‘Take your hands out of your pockets! 3 Marqls Gaston Alexandre Auguste de Galle (1830-1909), 4 French general known (arbi hah uenmene of Comme prisoner Vindimir Mayakovsky 21Grab a rock, a knife, a bomb, and if you don’ have any arms, tse your forehead! Come on, you litle starving, sweating, timid, moldy, lice-infested clodst Come on! We'll paine Monday and Tuesday with blood and make them bolidays. Ac knifepoine lee che earth remember those she tried co vulgarize! The earth, Aeshy as Rothschild's oveepetted mists. ‘As on an official holiday, Tee the flags Ay, in a delirium of gunfire, you street lamps, raise up higher the bloody carcasses of merchants Swearing — begging — enifing — bicing cach other's flesh — ‘The sky was red as the Marsei 4 final shudder and che sun set. ‘This is crazy, ‘There won't be a thing left. Nighe will come, chew you up, gobble you down, Lok — is the sky curning Judas again, 22° Vladimir Mayakovsky with its handful of treachery-stained stars? Nighe came. Mamai* squatting down on the city to feat. You can’t break through this night, black as Azef.5 1 slouch in the corner of bar, ‘getting wine on the tablecloth and on my soul, and I see in another corner the round eyes of the madonna piercing my heart Why give this crowd in a bar such radiance of painted cliché? See? Again they spit on the man from Golgotha and choote Barabbas. (On purpose, perhaps, my face is no newer among this human garbage heap, pethaps I'm your handsomest Give them in their mildewed joy a time of fase death, s0 the children will grow, boys becoming fathers, Birls — pregnanc. ‘And let the new born have the keen grizale of the ma ‘And in their cuen 4. Mami — Khan ofthe Golder Horde, He wat defeated by Rusans under Peace Dey Dono a the Dat of Klikove, Sept 8 1380 3. YevnwMegr Aref (iMG) al agen Revltinary Paty athe Tre police, 1 ero empay ent ofthe Sil ‘Vladimir Mayakovsky 23they'll baptize theie infanes wich che names of my poems. 1, praiser of England and machines, perhaps em merely the thirteenth apostle in a common gospel And wherever iy dirty voice souncls, then, minute by minute, day and night, maybe Jesus Christ is sniffing the forget-me-nots of my soul 4 Maria! Maria! Mari Let me ia! ‘These streets drive me nuts! No? You'll wai for my cheeks to collapse and me to atzive, squeezed, stale, toochless, muttering that today, Tm “amazingly honest?” Maria — look, my shoulders are sinking. On the streets ‘men poke a the blubber of four-story craws, * Hieele tiny eyes stick out, worn out in forty years, 24 Vladimir Mayakovsky at mie gnawing — again — the stale crusts of old caresses Rain pours its tears down, fon the sidewalk. A wino in the puddles soaked, licks the dead steee’s cobbles, but on his faded eyelashes, yes! — ton the eyelashes on che grizted icicles tears pour down, ye! — from the lowered eyes of the waterspouts. ‘The rain poked and licked everyone on foot, but athlete after fa athlete gleamed by in cartiages. Stuffed down to the bone, people cracked open, and che grease dripping out, plus the old chewed hamburger plus the gummy used bread, flowed down in a cruddy river from the carriages. Maciat How can I jam a delicate word into those fac eats? A bird sings for charity, hungry — but he sings sweetly. Buc I'm aman, Ma ordinary, fone that the tubercular nighe coughed up onco Presaya’s dirty hand. ‘Maria, do you want a man like me? Let me iat Or Tl have a fic and squash the doorbell Viadimic Mayakovsky 2526 Maia! ‘The pascures of the streee are a jungle, ‘They've got their hands around my throse. Open up! Te ures! Look, they’ sticking hhacpins in my eyes! Sweetheart, never mind the damp mouneain of sweaty-bellied women 1 carry on my oxy neck — Tug 1 million pure endless loves through my life and a billion fou! Hele likes. Never mind ifm in storms of beerayal 1 kiss thousands of precey faces “Mayakovsky's gies!” They're juse the dynasty hae rules from 2 madman’s heart Maria, come closer, [Naked and shameless fr ttembling in fear, sive me your beautiful mouth. ‘My heare and I never live in May, we're stuck ina hundred Aprils. Maria! ‘The poets cll sonnets to Diana, but I fam pure flesh, Vladimir Mayakovsky 100% man, 1 ask for your body, ply, as Chris “Give us this day ‘our daily bread!" Give, Maria! Mar {Vm scared I'll forget your name like poet's seated he'll forget word born ac night in pain, equal to god. T'll cherish and love your body as a toldier, smutilaced by war, vseless, alone, cherishes his one leg. Maria — ‘You don't want to? You're not going to? Hat So again, dim and dull, T'l take my sobbed-on heart and carry it as a dog to the kennel his paw a eenin crushed. 1 give joy to the road with my heart's blood. Blood sticks in fowers on my dusty shirt. Viadimir Mayakovsky a7‘The sun, Salome, will dance a Herodiade 1 thousand times acound the earch, the Baptists head, And when my time hhas danced itself out, 4 million spots of blood will be spread along the path to my father’s house. TH climb up, filthy, Geom sleeping in ditches) and FU sand beside him and bend down and shout ia his ear, Listen, sit god, aren't you bored daubing your pulfy eyes in cloudy jelly every day? Why don't we rig up a metry-go-round around the tree of good and evil? You'll be omnipresent in every cupboard and we'll see the tables with such wine thac even the Apostle Peter, che puritan, will dance the kickepoo, We'll put litcle Eves back in Eden, Say the word — and by tonight T'Il gee you the bese girls from the boulevards — hhow about chat? Why nor? You shake your head, Curly? You frown, Santa? You chink this ching 28 Vladimir Mayakovsky with wings behind you knows what love is? I'm an angel t00, I was one — used to stare gendly as a sugatlamb, but I'm not going co give old mares ‘ornamental vases of tormented Sevres anymore. Almighty, you made hands, ove everyone « head, s0 why couldn't you manage to lee people, painlessly, make love and make love and make love? I thought you were Mr. but you're a jerk, a dwarf. Watch now, I'm getting my kailfe ‘out from my boot. ‘You winged foots hhuddle in your heaven, better start shaking your feathers! TM slic you, fall of incense, from here to Alaska! 1 can't be stopped! Wrong of right, Tm quite calm, Look — they've chopped up the stars, the sky's dripping blood! Hey you! Heaven! Gee ehae hae off Here I come! Vladimir Mayakovsky 2930 Not a whisper. ‘The universe sleeps, paw on ite huge eat lousy with stars Bob Perelman & Kathy Lewis A GOOD ATTITUDE TO HORSES Hoofbeats pounded. As if co sing: “Clip. hp. Clomp. lump.” Seripped by the wind, shod in ice, the street skidded. ‘The horse Fell on ies ass, clattering clumsily, and suddenly after every idle, gaping fency-pancs out to bell-boccom on Kuznetsky ‘crowded around, laughter began ringing, snickering: “A horse has fallen! allen — a horse! Chordled Kuznetsky Bridge. 1 alone would nor fuse my voice with its howling T walk over Vladimir Mayakovsky and see the eyes of che horse che seceet convulsed, turned over, and flowed on in its fashion 1 walk over and see — swelling deop after drop roll down its cheek, hide iesolf in the hair. ‘And some universal vague enimal anguish wells from me and spills spreading a pool, gurgling. “Horse, you mustn't, Horse, listen — you think you'te more worthless than they? ‘Ab, my lctle one, we're all part horse, cach is horse in his own way. Ie may be, old-cimer, that you don't need a nurse — fr perhaps my sentiment thought he ludicrous — sayway the horse ‘gave a shrug, ‘got back on his fet, whinnied, and switching his cil Vladimir Mayakovsky 31A chestnutshaired chit Cheering up, went and stood i his stall And took the whole incident like a young colt — and to live seemed worthwhile, and to labor, worthy. P. Lene 32 Vladimir Mayakovsky