Vladimir Mayakovsky
To Sergei Yesenin

You have gone.
    Another world’s your
        home, they say.
Into space…
    You fly now
        t’wards your stars’ collision.
Sober!
    There, there’s no advance, no
beer as pay.
No, Yesenin,
    this is
        not me joking.
Throat that
    swells with grief is
        joy-bereft.
So it’s
    clear – you summoned strength to slit your
wrists and then
    you hanged
        your bone-bag’s angry heft.
“Stop it! Stop it!
    Drop it!
        Have you lost your senses?”
Is
    flood to blanch
        ruddy cheeks
            with deathly chalk?!
You
    contrived to
        bend in such a fashion
as would lead
    most others to baulk.
Why? Oh, why?
    For what?”
        Bewilderment has crumpled.
Critics’ gabble babbles:
    “Taken by the wine,
yes…
    indeed…
        the thing is that
            his bow was rumpled
by excessive,
    bibulous, approach to wine.”
If, in
    place of hooligan’s
        Bohemia,
            class had
ruled the way you thought,
    it might have kept you straight.
Class, however,
    doesn’t
        slake its thirst with kvas, but
drinks its fill and
    doesn’t hesitate.
If they’d
    found a way to pin
        a guard to oversee
you, you’d
    have become adept,
        churning out the stuff they wanted.
In a
    day
        you’d’ve scribbled
            line on line,
stultifying, long
    and breathless,
        like Doronin.
Much the better then
    to combat first
        the drivel by
taking steps to
    end its wretched onslaught’s batter –
better to
    expire from vodka than
irksome clatter!
They’re not telling
    us
        the reason. Plaited
noose ended
    it; pocket knife, perhaps. But
if there’d
    been some ink,
        the Angleterre’s fresh linen
mightn’t
    have been
        horribly thus wetted.
Imitators were delighted: “Bis!” they
    cried.
Crowded round your
    corpse a mob
        that fought to get a sight.
Why encourage
    rate of suicides
        to go on going up?
Better
    to augment
        ink’s manufacture – day and night!
Evermore
    may tongue
        be fenced
            behind their toothy gate.
It is wrong
    and quite unfitting
        how they propagate the lies.
For the people,
    for the tongue-loosed waggers,
now has
    died a
        student-hooligan’s fine clamour.
And they bear
    a funerary scrap of dull
verses
    of the past
        they haven’t bothered to adapt
and
    they’ve hammered into
        mound their silly rhymes
with a stake.
    For surely
        bards like this are great?
Still
    there’s no monument for you there –
where knells
    bronze’s bell,
        where stands the granite’s floss?
But already memory’s fret
    is laced
        with tributes and
dedications
    plastered with memorial’s dross.
“Oh, Yesenin,”
    splutter they in handkerchiefs,
words of yours are
    lisped by Sobinov, who
them belabours
    under lifeless birch tree –
“Not a word,
    O f-friend, no
        n-n-not a whisper.”
Ach,
    let’s bring another m-matter
up with Leonid
    Lohengrinich, aka Sobinov!
I’ll get up,
    for I’m a bloody scrapper:
“Silence! Stop that
    chewing up
        his verse!”
Stick it up to
    them,
        you old flute slapper
in the place
    where sun’s ray doesn’t shine!
Deck them! Floor them all!
    They’re untalented, they’re trash,
puffing up the
    dark
        with sail-like business suits,
let’s see
    Kogan scatter
        now in all directions,
maiming all
    he meets
        with whiskers’ wax-tipped shoots.
Trash
    for now has
        lessened just a little.
It’s a challenge
    keeping up this thing.
Firstly,
    life
        requires renewing spittle –
when that’s finished
    time will come to sing.
It’s an age when
    life is difficult for scribes –
but let me know,
    you,
        behobbled and the sleazy,
where,
    and when,
        and what great path you ever trod
that
    was from outset beaten
        and easy.
At the
    head the word is
        leading human forces.
March!
    Let time be
        riven
            by the cannonball.
May wind
    now carry
        only tangled
hair to
    all the days of old.

For our planet is
    not well equipped for
        entertainment’s mad diversion.
Now we’ll
    have to
        wrest the
            joy from coming days.
In the life we
    have, to die
        is easy.
Making it
    is much more difficult.

Translated by Rupert Moreton