Vladimir Mayakovsky
What happened

More than possible,
more than necessary —
as though
in sleep sagging down in poetic delirium —
the lump of the heart has grown huge in bulk:
that bulk is love,
that bulk is hate.
Under the burden
my legs
walked shakily —
as you know,
I am
well built —
and yet,
an appendage of the heart, I dragged myself about,
hunching the vast width of my shoulders.
I swell with the milk of verse —
there’s no pouring it forth —
anywhere, it seems — and it brims me anew.
I am exhausted by lyricism —
wet nurse of the world,
the hyperbole
of Maupassant’s archetype.

Translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey