Mikhail Svetlov
To Mayakovsky

Gentle in friendship, in argument vehement,
It seems only yesterday I saw you thus
Sitting here talking with Boris Levin**
Till dawn, there was so much to discuss.

I see you addressing a general meeting
Of the club with a speech that’s tense and terse,
Winning the Diamond Cup, top trophy
In the USSR Championship for Verse.

I seem to be meeting you, though less often,
As if, never laid in the earth somehow,
You visit us here, stand here among us
As then, only ten years older now.

To the strains of music, a brass band playing,
Time has marched past us beyond recall,
Unostentatious in its immortality,
A time that is precious and dear to us all.

But there is no time and there’s no separation —
He lives, Mayakovsky! He never left,
The poet overlasting, loudly declaiming
Fine!*** on our planet’s highest crest.

___

*The poem was written for the tenth anniversary of the death of Mayakovsky (1893-1930).
**Boris Levin, a Soviet writer who fought in the Civil War.
***“Fine!” is the title of a famous poem of Mayakovsky’s.

Translated by Peter Tempest