Vladimir Mayakovsky
My soviet passport

I'd rip out 
                  bureaucracy's guts,
                                                    I would.
No reverence for mandates — 
                                            good riddance!
Pack off to very hell
                               for good
any old paper,
                      but this one...
Past berths and compartments
                                                 drawn out in a line
moves a customs official,
                                        most courteous Iooking.
Folks hand in their passports
                                              and I hand in mine,
my crimson-jacketed
                                 bookling.
Some passports
                          bring smiles
                                             in a matter of instants.
Others
           are fit but to fie on.
Special deference
                             is shown,
                                            for instance
for those
               with the double-bed
                                               British Leo.
Bowing non-stop,
                            as if rocked by a ship,
eating their eyes
                           into the "kind old uncles",
they take,
                as if they were taking a tip
the passports
                      of lanky Yankees.
At Polish passports
                               they bulge out their eyes
in thick-skulled
                       policemen's
                                          donkeyness,
as if to say:
                  what
                          the devil are these
geographical
                     novelties?
Without even turning
                                 their cabbage-like heads,
hardly deigning
                         to touch them,
they take,
                absent-minded,
                                         the passports of Swedes
and all sorts
                    of other Dutchmen.
But suddenly
                     Mr. Officer's face
                                                turns awry,
as if
       he has smelled disaster.
You've guessed it:
                             the officer's taken my
red-skinned hulk of a passport.
He handles it
                     like a hedgehog
                                              or bomb,
like a bee
                to be nipped
                                    by the wings,
like a twisting rattlesnake
                                        three yards long
with a hundred
                        deadly stings.
The porter winks;
                            to tell the truth,
he'd carry your luggage
                                     free
                                            all the way for you.
The gendarme
                        looks questioningly
                                                      at the sleuth,
the sleuth looks back:
                                   what to do with this wayfarer?
With what delight,
                            by the gendarmes,
                                                         damn it,
I'd be flayed,
                    crucified,
                                  hanged
for the crime of holding
                                    a sickled, 
                                                   hammered
Soviet passport
                          in my hand!
I'd rip out bureaucracy's guts,
                                              I would.
No reverence for mandates —
                                                good riddance!
Pack off to very hell
                                for good
any old paper,
                       but this one...
As
     the most valuable
                                  of certificates
I pull it
           from the pants
                                  where my documents are:
read it
          envy me —
                             I'm a citizen
of the USSR!

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg