Vladimir Mayakovsky
A few words about my wife

Along far beaches of uncharted seas
the moon —
my wife — goes driving.
She’s redhaired, my beloved.
Behind her turnout,
a variegated throng of constellations scurries,
screaming.
She weds with a garage,
kisses newspaper kiosks,
while a fluttering-eyed page tinsels her train,
the Milky Way.
And I?
To me, ablaze, the yoke of brows
has lugged fresh pails from deep-eyed wells.
In lacustrine silks you hung,
an amber fiddle chanting in your thighs?
You threw no baited line
into the regions of malignant roofs.
In sands’ nostalgia bathed, I drown in boulevards;
for that's your daughter —
my song
in mesh of stocking gliding
by the coffee houses!

Translated by Patricia Blake