Vladimir Mayakovsky
Four words, heavy as a blow...

 Four words, heavy as a blow:
"...unto Caesar... unto god..."
But where can a man
like me
bury his head?
Where is there shelter for me?

If I were as small
as the Great Ocean,
I’d tiptoe on the waves
and woo the moon like the tide.
Where shall I find a beloved,
a beloved like me?
She would be too big for the tiny sky!

Oh, to be poor!
Like a multimillionaire!
What’s money to the soul?
In it dwells an insatiable thief.
The gold of all the Californias
will never satisfy the rapacious horde of my lusts.

Oh, to be tongued-tied
like Dante
or Petrarch!
I'd kindle my soul for one love alone!
In verse I’d command her to bum to ash!
And if my words
and my love
were a triumphal arch,
then grandly
all the heroines of love through the ages
would pass through it, leaving no trace.

Oh, were I
as quiet
as thunder
then I would whine
and fold earth’s aged hermitage in my shuddering embrace.
If,
to its full power,
I used my vast voice,
the comets would wring their burning hands
and plunge headlong in anguish.

With my eyes’ rays I’d gnaw the night —
if I were, oh,
as dull
as the sun!
Why should I want
to feed with my radiance
the earth’s lean lap!

I shall go by,
dragging my burden of love.
In what delirious
and ailing
night,
was I sired by Goliaths —
I, so large,
so unwanted? 

Translated by Patricia Blake