At The Top Of My Voice - First Prelude

My most respected
  comrades of posterity!
Rummaging among
  these days’
  petrified crap,
exploring the twilight of our times,
you,
  possibly,
  will inquire about me too.
And, possibly, your scholars
  will declare,
with their erudition overwhelming
  a swarm of problems;
once there lived
  a certain champion of boiled water,
and inveterate enemy of raw water.
Professor,
  take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
  those times
  and myself.
I, a latrine cleaner
  and water carrier,
by the revolution
  mobilized and drafted,
went off to the front
  from the aristocratic gardens
of poetry -
  the capricious wench
She planted a delicious garden,
the daughter,
  cottage,
  pond
  and meadow.
Myself a garden I did plant,
myself with water sprinkled it.
some pour their verse from water cans;
others spit water
  from their mouth -
the curly Macks,
  the clever jacks -
but what the hell’s it all about!
There’s no damming al this up -
beneath the walls they mandoline:
“Tara-tina, tara-tine,
tw-a-n-g...”
It’s no great honor, then,
  for my monuments
to rise from such roses
above the public squares,
  where consumption coughs,
where whores, hooligans and syphilis
  walk.
Agitprop
  sticks
  in my teeth too,
and I’d rather
  compose
  romances for you -
more profit in it
  and more charm.
But I
  subdued
  myself,
  setting my heel
on the throat
  of my own song.
Listen,
  comrades of posterity,
to the agitator
  the rabble-rouser.
Stifling
  the torrents of poetry,
I’ll skip
  the volumes of lyrics;
as one alive,
  I’ll address the living.
I’ll join you
  in the far communist future,
I who am
  no Esenin super-hero.
My verse will reach you
  across the peaks of ages,
over the heads
  of governments and poets.
My verse
  will reach you
not as an arrow
  in a cupid-lyred chase,
not as worn penny
Reaches a numismatist,
not as the light of dead stars reaches you.
My verse
  by labor
  will break the mountain chain of years,
and will present itself
  ponderous,
  crude,
  tangible,
as an aqueduct,
  by slaves of Rome
constructed,
  enters into our days.
When in mounds of books,
  where verse lies buried,
you discover by chance the iron filings of lines,
touch them
  with respect,
  as you would
some antique
  yet awesome weapon.
It’s no habit of mine
  to caress
  the ear
  with words;
a maiden’s ear
  curly-ringed
will not crimson
  when flicked by smut.
In parade deploying
  the armies of my pages,
I shall inspect
  the regiments in line.
Heavy as lead,
  my verses at attention stand,
ready for death
  and for immortal fame.
The poems are rigid,
  pressing muzzle
to muzzle their gaping
  pointed titles.
The favorite
  of all the armed forces
the cavalry of witticisms
  ready
to launch a wild hallooing charge,
reins its chargers still,
  raising
the pointed lances of the rhymes.
and all
  these troops armed to the teeth,
which have flashed by
  victoriously for twenty years,
all these,
  to their very last page,
I present to you,
  the planet’s proletarian.
The enemy
  of the massed working class
is my enemy too
  inveterate and of long standing.
Years of trial
  and days of hunger
  ordered us
to march
  under the red flag.
We opened
  each volume
  of Marx
as we would open
  the shutters
  in our own house;
but we did not have to read
  to make up our minds
which side to join,
  which side to fight on.
Our dialectics
  were not learned
  from Hegel.
In the roar of battle
  it erupted into verse,
when,
  under fire,
  the bourgeois decamped
as once we ourselves
  had fled
  from them.
Let fame
  trudge
  after genius
like an inconsolable widow
  to a funeral march -
die then, my verse,
  die like a common soldier,
like our men
  who nameless died attacking!
I don’t care a spit
  for tons of bronze;
I don’t care a spit
  for slimy marble.
We’re men of  kind,
  we’ll come to terms about our fame;
let our
  common monument be
socialism
  built
  in battle.
Men of posterity
  examine the flotsam of dictionaries:
out of Lethe
  will bob up
  the debris of such words
as “prostitution,”
  “tuberculosis,”
  “blockade.”
For you,
  who are now
  healthy and agile,
the poet
  with the rough tongue
  of his posters,
has licked away consumptives’ spittle.
With the tail of my years behind me,
  I begin to resemble
those monsters,
  excavated dinosaurs.
Comrade life,
  let us
  march faster,
march
  faster through what’s left
  of the five-year plan.
My verse
  has brought me
  no rubles to spare:
no craftsmen have made
  mahogany chairs for my house.
In all conscience,
  I need nothing
except
  a freshly laundered shirt.
When I appear
  before the CCC
  of the coming
  bright years,
by way of my Bolshevik party card,
  I’ll raise
above the heads
  of a gang of self-seeking
  poets and rogues,
all the hundred volumes
  of my
  communist-committed books.