Vladimir Mayakovsky
Lily Dear!

In lieu of a letter

The room’s a chapter of Kruchonykh’s Inferno.
Air
gnawed out by tobacco smoke.
Remember –
At the window,
For the first time,
Burning,
With tender frenzy your arms I’d stroke.

Now you’re sitting there,
Heart in armour;
A day,
And perhaps,
I’ll be driven out,
To the bleary hall:
Let’s dress: be calmer,
Crazy heart, don’t hammer so loud!

I’ll rush out, raving,
Hurl my body into the street,
slashed by despair from foot to brow.
Don’t,
Don’t do it,
Darling,
Sweet!
Better say goodbye right now.

Anyway,
My love’s a crippling weight
To hang on you
wherever you flee.
Let me sob it out
In a last complaint,
the bitterness of my misery.

A bull tired out by a day of sweat
Can plunge into water,
Get cooled and rested.
For me
There’s no sea but your love,
And yet
From that even tears can’t wrest me a respite.

If a weary elephant wants some calm,
Lordly, he’ll lounge on the sun-baked sun.
I’ve
Only your love,
For sun and balm,
Yet I can’t even guess who’ll be fondling your hand.

If a poet were so tormented
He might
Barter his love for cash and fame.
For me
The world holds no other delight
Than the ring and glitter of your dear name.

No rope will be noosed,
No stairwell leapt in.
Nor will bullet or poison take my life.
No power over me,
Your glance excepting,
Has the blade of any knife.

Tomorrow you’ll forget
It was I who crowned you,
I
Who seared out a flowering soul.
The pages of my books will be vortexed
Around you
By a vain existence’s carnival whirl.

Could my words,
Dry leaves that they are but,
Detain you
With throbbing heart?

Ah,
Let the last of my tenderness carpet
Your footfall as you depart!

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg