Selected Poems

Shallow Philosophy over the Depths

108 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky Shallow Philosophy over the Depths I’ll become, if not Tolstoy, then a fatty, — all I do is eat and write, stupefied by the heat. Who hasn’t played the philosopher while at sea? Only water. Yesterday the ocean was mad as the devil, today, meeker than a dove on her eggs. What’s the difference! Everything flows, everything changes. Water has its own seasons: times of ebb and times of flow. But Steklov’s pen never runs out of water. No fair. A croaked fishie floats all alone, her finlets hanging there like shot-down winglets. She’s been floating for weeks, and she has neither bottom nor top. Coming toward us slower than the body of a seal is a steamship from Mexico, just where we’re headed. It couldn’t be otherwise. It’s the division of labor. That’s a whale, they say. Perhaps they’re right. It’s like a fishy version of Bedny, about three times as wide. But Demian’s whiskers are on the outside, whereas the whale’s are within. Years are seagulls. They fly off in formation and hit the water to cram their bellies with fishies. The seagulls have vanished. Tell me, in essence, where are the birdies? I was born and grew up; they fed me a pacifier; I’ve lived, worked, and grown pretty old . . . the soviet years ✦ 109 110 ✦ vladimir mayakovsky Now life too shall pass by just like the Azorean Islands. July 3, 1925—the Atlantic Ocean ...