Vladimir Mayakovsky
Contagious cargo

The steamer hove in,
                                  hooted,
                                               roared,
and,
        runaway convict,
                                   they've chained’er.
700
       humans on hoard.
Negroes —
               the remainder.
Out of a launch
                         to the steamer decks.
Popping
              up
                   for inspection,
the doctor squints
                             through tortoise-shell specs:
“Anyone got infection?”
Pimples well-powdered,
                                       features well-washed,
swaying and swaggering coyly,
the first class
                      filed
                              as the doctor watched
with smile
                urbane and oily.
From double-barreller nostrils
                                               exhaling
blue smoke
                   in a cunning ring,
headmost came
                          in a diamond halo
Swift —
          the porker king.
A yard
           from his snigger
                                     the stinkpipe stuck.
Go,
      pry into clients like these!
Under cambric vest,
                                under silken trunks,
go and discern
                        disease.
Island!
           To abstinence
                                 take recourse.
Don’t let him beyond the docks.
But no —
           the captain
                             salutes, in due course,
and Swift is let loose
                                with the pox.
First class done with,
                                  the second class goes
in
   for examination.
The doctor pokes
                           into ear and nose,
the picture of irritation.
The doctor sneered,
                                 and the doctor scowled,
jowls
        all askew
                       with spleen,
then sent three blokes
                                   from the second class crowd
for a couple of days’ quarantine.
After the second class
                                    loomed the third,
black
         with niggers
                             as ink.
The doctor
                  looked at his watch.
                                                  disturbed,
“Cocktail-hour,
                        I should think.
Off!
       and shut ’em up in the hold.
Ill —
     clear as day!”
                           he stated.
“Dirty vagabonds!
                             And, all told,
not one of ’em
                       vaccinated.”
Down
          in the hold
                           he sprawls, Tom Jackson,
hell of a pain
                     in his noddle.
Tomorrow
                they’ll jab him
                                      with smallpox vaccine
and home
                 Tom Jackson’ll toddle.
Tommy,
            he’s got a wife on shore;
hair — like a soft black cushion,
and skin —
               the sleekest you ever saw,
just like
            Black Lion shoeshine.
While Tom
                  went tramping
                                         for work
                                                       abroad
— Cuba’s got eyes
                               for beauty —
his wife
             got sacked
                               for what the boss called
dodgin’ her nat’ral duty.
The moon chucks coins
                                       on the ocean bed —
dive in
           and all ills will mend.
No meat whole weeks,
                                    no meal 'n' no bread,
just pineapples
                         weeks on end.
Another steamer
                           screwed in by its screw —
’s weeks
               till the next’ll be coinin’.
I lunger’s no help
                            in pulling through.
Ah, Tommy don’t love me,
                                          Tommy ain’t true,
shares his mat with a white,
                                             does Tommy.
No way of earning,
                               no chance to steal —
police
          under parasols
                                  everywhere.
And Swift —
                 those exotics make him feel
lascivious
                as a terrier.
Old Sallow
                 perspired
                                under trunks and vest
at flesh
            so juicy and black.
He poked
                his bucks
                                at the face, the breast —
at the moons
                     with famine slack.
Then grappled
                        hunger,
                                     that lifelong foe,
with heavy-weight
                             faithfulness.
Inside
          was the clear decision
                                              NO,
yet lips
            broke huskily:
                                   YES. . . .
Already pushing
                           the door with his shoulder
was festering Mister Swift.
And time
               wasn’t
                           a minute older
when up they were whisked by the lift.
Tom
       turned up
                       in a week or so
and a fortnight through
                                     slept fast,
glad
       that they’d be
                             with bread and dough
and the smallpox bogy was past.
But there came a day
                                   when on Negro skin
ominous patterns
                            were etched
and children
                    their mothers’ wombs within
grew dumb,
                   blind
                           and wretched.
The calendar skimmed
                                     from day to day
crippling legs and arms,
eating
           half their bodies
                                     away,
stretching their palms
                                   for alms.
And special note
                           of the Negro
                                               was made
when the flock
                       collected for prayer.
Pointing towards
                           this visual aid
Parson Dry
                  would declare:
“It’s God
              who punishes
                                     man
                                             and wife
for her
            bringing visitors home.”
And rotting black flesh
                                    for the rest of life
peeled from rotting Negro bone.
Nosing in politics?
                             Not my vocation.
I just
        jot down
                      what I see.
Some folks
                   call it
                            CIVILISATION,
others —
             CO-LO-NIAL PO-LI-CY.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg