M-e-e P-e-d

from "A Cloud in Trousers"

เมฆในกางเกง

by Vladimir Mayakovsky tr. by Peter Bogdanoff

Your thoughts Dreaming in a softened brain Like a stuffed lackey on a greasy couch I will tease with a blood-soaked scrap of heart and satiate my impudent, caustic contempt.

There is not a single gray hair in my soul. There is no grandfatherly gentleness. Shaking the world with the might of my voice I go by A handsome Twenty-two-year-old.

Dear ones! You play love on the violin. The crude play love on a drum. But unlike me, you cannot turn yourselve inside out And become entirely lips.

Out of your cambric drawing rooms, Come and learn Officious officials of the angelic league And you, who calmly thumb through your lips The way a cook flips the pages of a cookbook.

If you want, I'll rage on raw meat Or -- changing tones like the sky -- If you want --
I'll be irreproachably gentle, Not a man,
But a cloud in trousers.

I do not believe there is a blossomy nice! Again I glorify Men as stale a sickrooms And women as battered as proverbs.