Vladimir Mayakovsky
As a kid

As a kid, I was gifted with lots of love.
From childhood on,
folks
are overcome by chores.
I —
ran away once I had enough,
and procrastinated,
walking along the Rion shores.
My mom got angry:
“What a wicked child!”
My dad said his belt would teach me some sense.
But I,
with a phony three-ruble bill, lived wild
and gambled with soldiers under a fence.
Without shirts
or shoes weighing down upon me,
out, in the sunlight, I sprawled out and baked.
First turned my back to the sun,
then my tummy —
all day long, til my belly began to ache.
The sun was amazed:
“Barely noticeable on the shore!
And yet —
has a heart!
The little one knows no bounds!
How
can it have
enough
space to store —
me,
the river,
and the towering mountains?! 

Translated by Andrey Kneller