From "The Cloud in Trousers" (on Mayakovsky's birthday) [trans. by David Lehman]

from Part Four of "The Cloud in Trousers"

Maria! Maria! Maria!
Open up.
It’s cold out here, and the streets are scary.

No? Would you rather see me freeze,
whipped by the wind, stripped,
my skull devoid of my teeth?

Maria, look! I’m shivering! I’m shaking!
and the rain is pelting the pavement,
pelting all of us,
beggars, junkies, winos, bums,
like tears
from the eyes of the drainpipe waterfall.

And thus the rain licked our feet
all of us except for the fatsos
stuffed with goose liver
and with an apple in their mouths
riding in the back seats of expensive carriages.

*

Maria!
Open up.
The mob is breathing down my neck.
Look, they’re attacking my eyes with hatpins!

I’m in.

Maria, I want you
to ignore whatever they say about me
I may have kissed a thousand girls
but you’re this madman’s favorite,
for I’ll gladly admit I’m a mad man,
mad about you.

Maria, I’d love it if you
and I took off all our clothes
and lay, naked and shameless,
or scared, if you prefer,
in bed.

Let me kiss you on the mouth.
On this May day come live with me
in the April of my heart.

Maria!
Poets write sonnets
to the souls of their lovers,
but I am every inch a man
and I want your body as much as
a devout Christian beseeches the Lord
to “give us this day our daily bread.”

Maria,
I confess I’m afraid I’ll forget your name
as a poet is afraid he’ll forget le mot juste
which he has looked for all his life,
the word born in a night to perish in a night,
while the soul glowed in rays of light.

Maria,
I promise you I will love your body
as much as a wounded veteran loves
his one remaining leg.

No? Why no?
But you say no.

Damn.

So once again I’ll have to carry my heart away
as a dog nurses the paw that was crushed by a train.

-- English version by David Lehman

[click here for a section from part II of "The Cloud in Trousers"]

Comments

[Alan Ziegler]

from Mayakovsky's How Verses are Made:
In about 1913, when I was returning from Saratov to Moscow, so as to prove my devotion to a certain female companion, I told her that I was 'not a man, but a cloud in trousers'. When I'd said it, I immediately thought it could be used in a poem; but what if it should at once circulate in conversation and be squandered to no avail? Terribly worried, I put leading questions to the girl for half an hour, and calmed down only when I was quite sure that my words were going in one ear and out the other.
Two years later I needed 'a cloud in trousers' for the title of a long poem.
For two days I pondered words to describe the tenderness a lonely man feels for his only love.
How will he cherish and love her?
On the third night I went to bed with a headache, and hadn't thought up anything. During the night the formulation came:
Your body
I shall cherish and love
As a soldier Crippled by war Useless
Belonging to no one Cherishes his one leg.
I leapt out of bed half-awake. By the dim light of a burnt-down match I wrote on a cigarette packet 'his one leg' and went to sleep. In the morning I puzzled for about two hours over that 'his one leg' written on my cigarette packet; I wondered how it had got there.

[Terence Winch]

Great translation. The poem is still so full of life.

[David Lehman]

Thanks for quoting Mayakovsky on the orign of the title, Alan. Just great! And thank you, Terence.

[Emily Fragos]

Mayakovsky's masterpiece, so incredibly modern and exciting. Pulsating translation! Thank you, David. And thank you, Alan, for the valuable story about the poem's writing.

By the way, George Balanchine (with his own infatuations) liked to refer to himself as "a cloud in trousers."

[Suzanne Lummis]

O.K., I super love this. From this moment on, it's my favorite love poem -- I mean, the guy's in earnest! Or, so I'd thought -- I'd read that the object of his affection never did warm up to him. He just wasn't her type. Poor Mayakovsky. But the account in the post above suggests it was more of an exercise. What to believe? Uncertain, especially considering that some poets lie, or so Plato maintained. And went around complaining about it...

[Alan Ziegler]

An essential new translation! Brings to mind Frank O'Hara's poem "Mayakovsky," with these lines that I copied into a notebook decades ago:

I love you. I love you,
but I’m turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I’ll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embrace a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.