Vladimir Mayakovsky
The smoke of tobacco ate away the air...

The smoke of tobacco ate away the air.
This room is but a chapter in Dante's inferno.
Remember, here's the window where
I first stroked your hands with ecstatic yearning.
Now you sit here, your heart clad in armor.
Another day — you'd scold me and throw me out, I believe.
Broken by shiver, pushing with ardor,
my arm would finally find the sleeve.
Running out of the fog of the hallway, wild,
slashed by desperation,
I'd cast my bones on the street.
Don't let it go that far,
my dear, darling, kind,
let me now take leave.
Anyway, my love is just
some heavy gear that
keeps hanging on you anywhere you go.
Let me at last howl out the tear gas
of bitter, offended moans.
If a bull is worn out by his load, it would leave
to repose itself in cooling waters.
Besides the love of yours, I have no ocean,
but even crying won't entreat your love of a rest I want now.
An elephant, tired and looking for peace,
kingly would lay in the sands parched by the glare.
Except your love, I have
no sun, but I don't
know with whom you're now and where.
If you'd vex a poet just like you can,
he would change his loved one for money and sheer fame,
but no chink can make me happy except
the most sonorous chime of your most dear name.
But I won't plunge into a well hole,
nor drink some poison,
nor pull the trigger at my temple perchance.
Every knife over me is but pointless,
no blade has power except for your glance.
Tomorrow you'll forget that once I had you crowned
and branded with love the flowering soul,
The whirl of fussy days, when flying all around,
will blow my pages about in shoals...
Maybe my words in the dry leaves' rendering
would make you pant for breath,
to stop you would help?

Let me at least with last-minute tenderness
pave your receding step.

Translated by Eugene Matusov