Selected Poems

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix About This Edition xxvii I Myself 3 The Early Years: 1912–1916 31 Night 33 Morning 34 From Street to Street 36 Could You? 38 Me 39 Love 43 We 44 The Giant Hell of the City 45 Take That! 46 They Don’t Understand Anything 47 In a Motorcar 48 The Fop’s Blouse 49 Listen Up! 50 But Be That as It May 52 Petersburg Again 53 Mama and the Evening Killed by the Germans 54 Violin and a Bit Nervously 56 That’s How I Became a Dog 58 Lilichka! In Place of a Letter 60 To His Beloved Self the Author Dedicates These Lines 63 The Years of Upheaval: 1917–1920 65 Our March 67 Being Good to Horses 68 Ode to the Revolution 70 An Order to the Army of Art 72 It’s Too Early to Rejoice 74 The Poet Worker 76 An Extraordinary Adventure . . . 78 The Soviet Years: 1922–1930 83 All Meetinged Out 85 Schematic of Laughter 88 Jubilee 90 Tamara and the Demon 101 A Farewell 107 Shallow Philosophy over the Depths 108 Broadway 111 The Brooklyn Bridge 115 To Sergei Yesenin 121 Conversation with a Taxman About Poetry 128 A Letter to Tatiana Yakovlev 138 Lines on a Soviet Passport 142 At the Top of My Voice 146 Unfinished Lyrics 154 The Suicide Note 155 Selected Long Poems 157 The Cloud in Pants 159 The Backbone Flute 185 150,000,000 196 I Love 248 The Flying Proletarian 259 Notes 319 Bibliography 373 ...