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70 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky Ode to the Revolution To thee, hissed at, mocked by whole batteries, to thee, in ulcers from the backbiting of bayonets, I rapturously render up over the soared swearwords my ode’s most solemn “O”! O Beastly! O Childish! O Halfpenny! O Great One! What other name have you been given? What turns might you still take, O Two-Faced One? A harmonious structure or a heap of ruins? To the engineer covered in coal dust, to the miner digging up layers of ore, you sing praises, sing praises with reverence; you glorify human labor. But tomorrow the Blessed will raise its cathedral rafters in vain, begging for mercy— the snub-snouted hogs of your six-inch guns will blast away the millennia of the Kremlin. Glory. Wheezing through her dying voyage. Her sirens’ squeal is muffled and thin. You send sailors onto the sinking ship, where a forgotten kitten meows. And afterward! You roar through the drunken crowd, your dashing mustache all twirled up in swagger. With rifle-butts you knock gray-haired admirals headfirst from the bridge in Helsingfors. It’s still licking and licking yesterday’s wounds, and again I see opened veins. To thee I send a philistine’s “Oh be thrice cursed!” and my own, the poet’s “Oh be four times glorified, Blessed One!” 1918 the years of upheaval ✦ 71 ...

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