Selected Poems

Me

Me 1 Along the road of my deep-rutted soul, harsh phrases’ heels weave madmen’s paces. Where cities are hanged and in a noose of cloud the crooked necks of towers have grown stiff— I go alone to cry for the policemen crucified on their crossroads. 2 A Few Words About My Wife Along the distant beach of unknown seas walks the moon, my wife. My redheaded mistress. Behind her equipage, a throng of constellations, motley-striped, stretches screaming. She’s crowned by an automobile garage, kissed by newspaper kiosks, the early years ✦ 39 40 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky and her gown-train’s Milky Way, like some blinking errand-boy, is decked in tinselly sparkles. What about me? As I burn, the yoke of my eyebrows delivers icy buckets drawn from the wells of my eyes. You hang there draped in lake-silks, your thighs singing like an amber violin. Down to the realms of the rooftops’ spite you can’t cast your sparkling line. I’m drowning in boulevards, washed over by the longing of sands: don’t you see, it’s your daughter— my song in fishnet stockings outside the cafés! 3 A Few Words About My Mama I have a mama on wallpaper of cornflower blue. Whereas I stroll about in motley peahens; I torment shaggy daisies, measuring them with my stride. Evening strikes up a tune on rusty oboes. I walk up to the window, believing that I will again see a storm cloud seated on top of the house. While in my sick mama’s room, the rustle of the people runs around from the bed to the empty corner. Mama knows— it’s a bunch of crazy ideas crawling out from behind the rooftops of Shustov’s factory. And when my forehead, crowned by a felt hat, is bloodied by the dimming window-frame, I’ll say, parting the wind’s howl with my bass: “Mama. If I should take pity on the vase of your torment, knocked down by the clouds’ dancing heels, who would caress the golden hands wrung by the billboard outside Avanzo’s windows?” 4 A Few Words About Me Myself I like to watch children die. Have you ever noticed the hazy waves of laughter breaking behind the proboscis of ennui? Whereas I, in the reading room of the streets, have leafed back and forth through the coffin-tome. Midnight with its soaking wet fingers groped me and a broken-down fence, and with the downpour’s drops on the bald-spot of its cupola, the crazy cathedral galloped off. I can see that Christ has escaped from his icon— street-sludge, weeping, kisses the windblown hem of his tunic. I shout at the bricks, I thrust the dagger of frenzied words into the swollen sky’s flesh: “Sun! the early years ✦ 41 42 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky My father! You, at least, take pity and don’t torture me! It’s my blood, spilled by you, that flows down this earthly road. It’s my soul, like shreds of torn cloud in a burnt-out sky, on the rusted cross of the belfry! Time! You, at least, crippled icon-dauber, paint my visage into the freak of the century’s image-case! I am alone, like the one remaining eye of a man on his way to join the blind!” 1913 ...