Vladimir Mayakovsky
Impossible

I can’t do it alone —
carry the grand piano
(and even less,
the safe).
But if I can’t manage the safe
or the grand piano,
then, having retrieved it,
how can I carry my heart.
Bankers know:
“We’re boundlessly rich.
If we don’t have enough pockets,
we can stuff our safes.”
In you —
I have hidden
my love,
like riches in steel,
and I walk about
exulting, a Croesus.
And,
if desire insist
I can draw out a smile,
a half-smile,
even less,
and, in company reveling,
in half a night expend
some fifteen rubles’ worth of lyrical change.

Translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey