Vladimir Mayakovsky
A most extraordinary adventure

What happened to Me, Vladimir Mayakovsky, at the Rumyantzev Summerhouse, Mount Akula, Pushkino, on the Yaroslav Railway.

The sunset fired a hundred suns,
summer had rolled into July,
heat stretched and purred,
heat hugged the sky —
and it was in the country this occurred.
The hill, called Mount Akula, hunched its back
and lifted high
Pushkino’s huts and winding streets.
The bark roofs of the village warped
the hill, and bowed with heat.
Now, off beyond the village lay
a yawning hole,
and every day
the sun dropped down into that hole,
and slowly and most certainly
upon the morrow its bright head
would pop out of that hole
as red
as ever, in the self-same way.
And this thing happened every day.
So I got sore,
Yes, I was vexed
It maddened me always to know
just what would happen next.
And once, thoroughly sick of it,
I shouted in the sun’s red face:
“Climb down!
Forget your lousy pit!”
I cried, like that, right at the sun:
“You good-for-nothing! You’ve a cushioned place
up in the clouds, and here I sit,
not knowing if its Spring or Fall,
drawing posters, and that’s all!”
I yelled up at the sun:
“You wait!
Listen to me, you brazen-eyed,
instead of setting as you do,
why don’t you come around,” I cried,
“and have a glass of tea with me?”

What have I done!
Now I am lost!
Here comes the sun,
with sprawling rays out-thrust,
clambering down across the field at me.
Pretending I’m not scared,
I beat a retreat.
His eyes are in the garden now.
Filling
the windows,
filling doors and cracks,
the burly sun walked in,
just so — dropped in,
and having got his breath,
spoke in a bass voice with a brazen din:
“I have to hold my fires in check
the first time since creation.
You invited me?
Then, poet, get the tea!
And don’t forget the jam.”
And though I wept with heat and dripped
a flood of perspiration,
I got the samovar.
“Well, have a seat,
Comrade luminary.”
It must have been the devil made me shout
my impudence at the sun.
I was put out —
and sat on the chair’s very edge:
afraid of what was going to happen next.
But from the sun
a strange light flowed —
he didn’t seem so vexed —
and I, forgetting my embarrassment,
no longer scary,
sat —
talking to the luminary!
I chat of this and that,
and soon,
with open friendship
pat him on the back.
And the sun
says — not to be outdone:
“Well, comrade, I declare,
we are a pair!
Let’s go!
Poet, lets sing,
and shout to scare
the drabness of the world,
I’ll pour out light,
you’ll do no worse
in pouring forth your verse.”
Then the sun loosed his shot, —
shattered night’s shadows,
banished the whole black lot.
Rays and words,
shine for all you’re worth!
And when the sun gets tired,
and night, the stupid sleepy-head,
wants to doze off,
suddenly I am fired
with zeal, and shine for all I’m worth —
and day roars out again.
Always to shine,
and everywhere to shine,
and, to the very last,
to shine, —
thus runs
my motto,
and the sun’s.

Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky