In commemoration of the end of Poetry Month, a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky:
Brother Writers
Seemingly I shall never grow accustomed
to sitting in the “Bristol,”
sipping tea,
fibbing by the line.
I shall knock down the glasses,
clamber on the table:
“Listen,
literary brothers!
Here you sit,
eyes drowning in tea,
velvet elbows worn with scribbling.
Raise your eyes from the unemptied glasses!
Disentangle your ears from those shaggy locks!
Darlings,
what has wedded you to words,
you who sit glued
to walls
and wall-paper?
Do you know
that Francois Villon,
when he had finished writing,
did a job of plundering?
But you,
who quake at the sight of a penknife,
boast yourselves the guardians of a splendid age.
what have you to write about today?
Any solicitor’s clerk finds
life
a hundred times more fascinating.
Gentlemen poets,
have you not wearied
of palaces,
pages,
love
and lilac blooms?
If such as you
are the creators,
then I spit upon all art.
I’d rather open a shop,
or work on the Stock Exchange
and bulge my sides with fat wallets.
In a tavern rear
I’ll spew up my soul
in a drunken song.
Will the blow tell,
cleave through your sheaves of hair?
But you have only one notion
under that mop of hair:
to be slick-combed! Rut why?
For a short while it’s not worth the labour,
and to be combed
eternally
is impossible.”
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930)
Translated from the russian by George Reavey