Vladimir Mayakovsky
You

You, wallowing through orgy alter orgy,
owning a bathroom and warm, snug toilet!
How dare you read about awards of St. Georgi
from newspaper columns with your blinkers oily?!

Do you realise, multitudinous nonentities
thinking how better to fill your gob,
that perhaps just now Petrov the lieutenant
had both his legs ripped off by a bomb?

Imagine if he, brought along for slaughter,
suddenly saw, with his blood out-draining,
you, with your mouths still dribbling soda-water
and vodka, lasciviously crooning Severyanin!

To give up my life for the likes of you,
lovers of woman-flesh, dinners and cars?
I’d rather go and serve pineapple juice
to the whores in Moscow’s bars.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg