The Bedbug and Selected Poetry

If you like I'll be furious flesh elemental, or- changing to tones that the sunset arouses- if you like- I'll be extraordinary gentle, not a man but - a cloud in trousers.

Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say

Then there's amortization, the deadliest of all; amortization of the heart and soul.

Usher: Why do you play only on the black keys [of the piano]? I suppose you think black is good enough for the proletariat. You play on all the keys only for the bourgeoisie, is that it? Oleg Bard: Please, citizen, please! I'm concentrating on the white ones! Usher: So you think white is best? Play on both! Oleg Bard: I am playing on both! Usher: So you compromise with [the] Whites, opportunist!

Have you seen a dog lick the hand that thrashed it?!

There’s less and less love, and less and less daring, and time is a battering ram against my head. — Vladimir Mayakovsky, from “Conversation With a Tax Collector About Poetry,” The Bedbug and Selected Poetry. (Indiana University Press October 22, 1975) Originally published 1929.

Oleg Bard: I understand, but by virtue of that power of imagination which, according to [Georgi] Plekhanov, is granted to Marxists, I can already see as through a prism, so to speak, the triumph of your class as symbolized by your sublime, ravishing, elegant, and class-conscious wedding!

Past One O’Clock ... Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars. In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation. Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Bedbug and selected poetry, translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey. Meridian Books, New York, 1960; Transcribed: by Mitch Abidor. This poem was found among Mayakovsky’s papers after his suicide on April 14, 1930. He had used the middle section, with slight changes, as an epilogue to his suicide note.