Selected Poems

I Love

248 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky I Love The Way It Usually Goes Everyone who gets born is granted some love, but between work, income, and the like, from day to day the heart’s soil dries and hardens. The heart is dressed in a body; the body, in a shirt— but that wasn’t enough! One guy— the idiot!— made up a bunch of cuffs for his shirts and decided to pour starch all over his breast. They all change their tune as old age approaches. The woman packs on cosmetics. The man, following Müller, waves his arms like a windmill. But it’s too late. The skin teems with wrinkles. Love blooms for a while, a little while— and then shrivels. As a Boy I too was given my fair share of love. But starting in childhood, the rank and file are drilled for various labors. Whereas I would run off to the banks of the Rioni and mosey about, not doing a damn thing. Mama would get mad: “What a rotten little boy!” Papa threatened to whip me with his belt. But I, raking in a counterfeit three-ruble note, would play Three Leaves with the soldiers by the fence. Unburdened by shirts, without any shoey burden, I’d roast all day in the heat of Kutaisi. I’d turn to the sun now my back, now my belly, until my stomach started growling. The sun stared and marveled: “You can barely see him down there! But he too has a heart. He’s doing his best! How does he find room in that tiny little space for me, the river, and the towering cliffs?!” As a Youth Youth is filled with a bunch of pursuits. We teach grammar worse than any fool. I even got myself kicked out of the fifth grade. selected long poems ✦ 249 250 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky They sent me to bounce around the prisons of Moscow. In your tiny little apartment world, bedroom lyrics grow up with soft curls. What could anyone find in those lapdog poems?! I, you see, learned to love in Butyrki. What’s the Bois de Boulogne’s languor to me?! What use do I have for seascape sighs?! I fell in love with the Office of Funeral Processions through the peephole of cell 103. They would look up at the sun every day and get cocky: “How much might those little rays be worth?” Whereas I, at that time, for the yellow rabbit on my wall, would have given up everything in this world. My University You know French. You can divide and multiply. You decline like a dream. Go ahead and decline, then! But tell me this— can you sing a duet with a building? Do you understand the language of streetcars? A human nestling, the moment it hatches, reaches for booklets, for notebook pages. Whereas I learned my ABCs from signboards, leafing through pages of iron and tin. They take the earth, cut it down, peel it; and that’s how they learn— with a miniature globe. Whereas I couldn’t help learning geography with my haunches, as I flopped down to sleep on the ground every night! Ilovaiskys are wracked by burning questions: “Was Barbarossa’s beard really red?” Go ahead! I don’t root through dust-caked nonsense— every bit of gossip in Moscow is known to me! They pick up a Dobroliubov book to learn to hate evil, but his very name is against it, the whole family tree yipping in protest! I learned as a child to hate the fat cats, always selling myself to get dinner. They finish their learning and take a seat; in order to please some lady, selected long poems ✦ 251 252 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky tiny thoughts jangle from their little brass foreheads. Whereas I only talked to apartment buildings, water-pump stations my only company. Pricking up the ears of their dormer windows, the rooftops would catch every word I let fall. And later they’d jabber about the night and one another, wagging their weathervane tongues. All Grown Up Grown-ups have business, their pockets full of rubles. Love? Right this way! That’ll be one hundred rubles. Whereas I, homeless, stuffed my giant hands in my torn pockets and moseyed around, wide-eyed. Nighttime. You put on your best clothes. Have your way with...