Vladimir Mayakovsky
My Soviet Passport

I'd tear
            like a wolf
                            at bureaucracy.
For mandates
                      my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
                              I'd chuck without mercy
every red-taped paper.
                                   But this...
Down the long front
                               of coupés and cabins
File the officials
                         politely.
They gather up passports
                                        and I give in
My own vermilion booklet.
For one kind of passport —
                                           smiling lips part
For others —
                   an attitude scornful.
They take
                with respect, for instance,
                                                        the passport
From a sleeping-car
English Lionel.
The good fellows eyes
                                   almost slip like pips
when,
         bowing as low as men can,
they take,
                as if they were taking a tip,
the passport
                    from an American.
At the Polish,
                     they dolefully blink and wheeze
in dumb
             police elephantism —
where are they from,
                                and what are these
geographical novelties?
And without a turn
                             of their cabbage heads,
their feelings
                     hidden in lower regions,
they take without blinking,
                                         the passports from Swedes
and various
                  old Norwegians.
Then sudden
                    as if their mouths were
                                                        aquake
those gentlemen almost
                                       whine
Those very official gentlemen
                                              take
that red-skinned passport
                                          of mine.
Take —
             like a bomb
                                take — like a hedgehog,
like a razor
                  double-edge stropped,
take —
         like a rattlesnake huge and long
with at least
                    20 fangs
                                  poison-tipped.
The porter's eyes
                            give a significant flick
(I'll carry your baggage
                                    for nix,
                                               mon ami...)
The gendarmes enquiringly
                                           look at the tec,
the tec, —
             at the gendarmerie.
With what delight
                           that gendarme caste
would have me
                         strung-up and whipped raw
because I hold
                       in my hands
                                           hammered-fast
sickle-clasped
                      my red Soviet passport.
I'd tear
            like a wolf
                            at bureaucracy.
For mandates
                      my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
                              I'd chuck
                                            without mercy
every red-taped paper,
                                    But this...
I pull out
             of my wide trouser-pockets
duplicate
of a priceless cargo.
                                You now:
read this
         and envy,
            I'm a citizen
of the Soviet Socialist Union!

Translated by Herbert Marshall