Vladimir Mayakovsky
Adults

Adults have much to do.
Their pockets are stuffed with rubles.
Love?
Certainlyl
For about a hundred rubles.
But I,
homeless,
thrust
my hands
into my tom pockets
and slouched about, goggle-eyed.
Night.
You put on your best dress.
You relax with wives and widows.
Moscow,
with the ring of its endless Sadovayas,
choked me in its embraces.
The hearts
of amorous women
go tic-toc.
On a bed of love the partners feel ecstatic.
Stretched out like Passion Square,
I caught the wild heartbeat of capital cities.
Open wide —
my heart nearly on the surface —
I unfolded myself to sun and puddle.
Enter me with your passions!
Climb in with your loves!
Now I have lost control of my heart.
I know where lodges the heart in others.
In the breast — as everyone knows!
But with me
anatomy has gone mad:
nothing but heart
roaring everywhere.
Oh, what a multitude
of springtimes
has been packed into my feverish body in these 20 years!
Their burden unspent is simply unbearable.
Unbearable not figuratively,
in verse,
but literally.

Translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey