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The Backbone Flute
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated from the Russian by Andrey Kneller

II.

Both, the sky,
Which in smoke, forgets that it's blue above,
And the clouds, which like ragged refugees rush,
I'll illumine with the dawn of my final love
Shinning bright like the consumptive's flush.

With happiness, I'll muffle the roar
Of the hoard,
Who have forgotten both, home and comfort.
Listen,
People!
Climb out of the trenches, up to the front,
You can fight it out after.

Even if,
Stumbling and wavering, in blood, like Bacchus,
A drunken battle goes on, --
Even then the words of love aren't outmoded.
Dear Germans!
I know
Goethe's Gretchen must
On your quivering lips be encoded.
A Frenchman
Dies, smiling, on a bayonet;
A shot-down pilot crashes with ardor,
If they're able to recollect
The kiss of your lips,
Traviata.
But as for me, I simply don't have the time
For the rosy pulp that the centuries chew on.
Come and embrace new legs tonight!
A redhead,
In makeup,--
I am singing of you now.

Perhaps, from these days,
Horrifying like the bayonet's edge,
When the centuries bleach my beard silver,
Only you
Shall remain unchanged,
And I, --
Running after you from city to city.

You will be wedded beyond the sea,
In the lair of the darkness, you'll hide--
Through  the London fog, I will kiss tenderly
With the fiery lips of the streetlamps at night.

If your caravan stops in the deserts' expanse,
Where the lions are keen and quick--
Beneath you,
Under the wind-blown sands,
I will place my Sahara-like burning cheek.

Wearing a smile,
you will see
a fine toreador on the ground!
Suddenly I,
Will fling my jealousy into the crowd
With the bull's dying eye.

If you carry your faltering steps to a bridge,
And wonder,
How good it would be beneath--
It is I,
The Seine flowing under,
Who beckons you,
Baring my rotten teeth.

If with another, with the sparks of the hooves,
You light up the Strelka or the Sokol'niki,
Then it is I, tempting you with the moon,
Climbing up higher, naked and calling you.

In the war, they will need someone strong,
like me-
they'll command me:
get killed, cold-blooded!
The last thing I utter--
Your name shall be
On my shrapnel-torn lip, blood-clotted.

Shall my end be a crown?
Or Saint
Helena?
Now that the storm of life I've tackled,
I'm an equal candidate
For the throne of the universe
And the convict's shackles.

If I'm destined to become a tsar here,--
My men will be told
To imprint your darling face,
My dear,
Onto the nation's gold.
But, if I end up there,
Where the tundra swallows the plains,--
Where the North Wind with the river bargains,--
I will scratch Lily's name all over the chains
And kiss them, laboring in the darkness.

Listen you, who forgot the color of the sky above,
Hairy,
like animals, wallowing in the slush,
In this world, this is perhaps,
The final love
Revealing itself in the consumptive's flush.

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