Vladimir Mayakovsky
My university

You know French.
You divide
and multiply even better.
Derive easily.
Well, keep deriving, you hear me?
Tell me this —
can you sing with the buildings
together?
Do you know the language streetcars are speaking?
The human fledgling
from the egg first rises —
and reaches for novels
for paper to write on.
I learned my alphabet from mass advertisements,
turning the pages of tin and iron.
You take the earth,
rip it to pieces
and study it,
stripped,
While the planet itself — is tiny!
I
learned geography with my ribs, —
using the earth
as a mattress
to lie on.
Illovayskiy is pleading, covered with sweat:
“Barbarossa’s beard — could it really be red?” —
Whatever!
This dust-covered rubbish is not worth my worry —
in Moscow, I know every single story!
You take Dobrolubov (to fend off all evil), —
for even his name
suggests he is good.
I’ve
detested the rich since my youth,
being feeble
and always selling my soul
for their food.
Here, gentlemen
study
so ladies may like them.
Empty foreheads ring from too much concentration.
But I
spoke alone
with the buildings at nighttime,
and with the water reserves held long conversations.
The rooftops, listening with every window frame,
caught whatever I threw into their ears that day
and later,
their weathercock tongues
continued to blabber
about the night
and about each other. 

Translated by Andrey Kneller