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 by Vladimir V Mayakovsky

Thoughts, go your way home.

Embrace,

depths of the soul and the sea.

In my view,

it is

stupid

to be

always serene.

My cabin is the worst

of all cabins - 

All night above me

Thuds a smithy of feet.

All night,

stirring the ceiling's calm,

dancers stampede

to a moaning motif:

"Marquita,

Marquita,

Marquita my darling,

why won't you,

Marquita,

why won't you love me …"

But why

Should marquita love me?!

I have

no francs to spare.

And Marquita

(at the slightest wink!)

for a hundred francs

she'd be brought to your room.

The sum's not large - 

just live for show - 

No,

you highbrow,

ruffling your matted hair,

you would thrust upon her

a sewing machine,

in stitches

scribbling 

the silk of verse.

Proletarians

arrive at communism

from below - 

by the low way of mines,

sickles,

and pitchforks - 

But I,

from poetry's skies,

plunge into communism,

because

without it

I feel no love.

Whether

I'm self-exiled

or sent to mamma - 

the steel of words corrodes,

the brass of the brass tarnishes.

Why,

beneath foreign rains,

must I soak,

rot,

and rust?

Here I recline,

having gone oversea,

in my idleness

barely moving

my machine parts.

I myself

feel like a Soviet

factory,

manufacturing happiness.

I object

to being torn up,

like a flower of the fields,

after a long day's work.

I want

the Gosplan to sweat

in debate,

assignning me

goals a year ahead.

I want

a commissar

with a decree

to lean over the thought of the age.

I want

the heart to earn

its love wage

at a specialist's rate.

I want

the factory committee

to lock

My lips

when the work is done.

I want

the pen to be on a par

with the bayonet;

and Stalin

to deliver his Politbureau

reports

about verse in the making

as he would about pig iron

and the smelting of steel.

"That's how it is,

the way it goes …

We've attained

the topmost level,

climbing from the workers' bunks:

in the Union

of Republics

the understanding of verse

now tops

the prewar norm …"

Transcribed: by Mitch Abidor.