Selected Poems

Mama and the Evening Killed by the Germans

54 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky Mama and the Evening Killed by the Germans Along the black streets, white mothers spasmodically spread, like brocade on a coffin. They wept their way into the crowd shouting about the beaten enemy: “Ach, shut their eyes, shut the newspapers’ eyes!” A letter. Mama, louder! Smoke. Smoke. More smoke! What’s that you’re mumbling, Mama, to me? Don’t you see— The air is paved with stone rumbling under artillery fire! Ma-a-a-ma! They just brought in an evening all covered in wounds. He held on for a long time, spread too tight, rough around the edges, and suddenly— his cloud shoulders broke down; he burst into tears, the poor guy, on Warsaw’s breast. The stars, on their hankies of dark-blue cotton, screeched out: “He’s killed, my dear, my dear one!” And the new moon’s eye squinted terribly at the dead fist clenching a cartridge clip. Lithuanian villages gathered round to watch, as Kaunas, forged by a kiss into one giant stump, bringing tears to the golden eyes of its churches, wrung its street-fingered hands. But the evening cried out, legless, armless: “You’ve got it all wrong, I’m still quite able— ha!— clanging my spurs in a burning mazurka, to twirl my golden-brown mustache!” The doorbell. What’s wrong, Mama? White, white as brocade on a coffin. “Leave me alone! It’s about him, he’s been killed—a telegram. Ach, shut their eyes, shut the newspapers’ eyes!” 1914 the early years ✦ 55 ...