Vladimir Mayakovsky
To Comrade Nette Man-and-ship

It wasn’t an unearthly shock —
        Not a shade from death’s door.
Into the port,
        blazing
                     like molten summer,
                                                      entered
and turning, made straight for the dock,
Comrade “Theodore
                                 Nette”
It is — he
        I recognised him.
In saucer-like goggles of life-saving belts.
“— Greetings, Nette:
        Gee, I’m glad that you’re alive
in running cables,
        grapnels,
                        and life-smoking funnels.
Come over here:
        Or is it shallow for you to be in?
From Batum, eh?
        How your boilers steamed....
Remember, Nette, —
        when a human being
in a dip-coupé
        you drank tea with me?
Took your time,
                         while others snored in oblivion.
Eyed
         sidelong,
                        diplomatic seals,
chatted en route
        about Romke Jacobson^**
and so comically swotted
        poetic rules.
Dropped asleep at dawn.
        Finger
                   cramped round the trigger...
Butt in —
        those who like a trip:
And just a year ago
        who’d have figured
I’d meet with you again —
        as a ship.
Beyond your stern the moon —
        Gee, it’s great:
Cutting space in half
        as it sets,
Trailing tracks of heroes
        for ever in its wake,
bright and bloody
        from corridor combats,
Communism from books
        is easy belief.
(To serve it up
                        in books
                                       is fashionable.)
But this —
        brings “rigmarole” to life,
and shows
        communism
                             in flesh and blood.
We live,
        firm-clenched
                                in an iron oath.
For that —
        we’re crucified
                                and bullets fleer:
that the world shall be
        one human commonwealth,
without any Russia,
        without any Latvia.
Blood runs in our veins
        not water pallid.
We march on,
        through revolver barks,
that
        dying,
                   we shall be embodied
in ships,
        in poems,
                        and other long-lived works.

I want to live and live,
        through the years whirl fleet,
But at the end I want —
        no other wish lives yet —
My hour of death
        I want to meet
as death was met
        by Comrade Theodore Nette.

____
Theodore Nette was a Latvian Bolshevik, a friend of Mayakovsky. He became a Diplomatic Courier for the Soviet Government, and one day while travelling from Latvia to Russia in a Diplomatic Coupé, “Whites” attempted to steal his diplomatic bag. A struggle ensued in the corridor. He fought them off with his revolver, killing both his assailants saving his country’s documents, but himself being killed in the process. Later a Soviet Steamship on the Black Sea was named after him.

** A Russian Literary Critic.

Translated by Herbert Marshall