Vladimir Mayakovsky
Could you?

I splattered the pattern of weekdays at once
with color splashed out from a glass;
I showed you, on a dish of aspic,
the slanting cheekbones of the ocean.
Upon the scales of a tin fish
I read the calls of new lips.
And how about you,
                              could you
                                            play a nocturne
on a flute of drainpipes?

Translated by James McGavran