Vladimir Mayakovsky
       (1893-1930)
 

MY SOVIET PASSPORT

I'd rip out
                bureaucracy's guts,
                                              I would.
No reverence for mandates-
                                             good riddance!
Pack off to very hell
                               for good
any old paper,
                      but this one...
Past berths and compartments
                                                drawn out in a line
moves a customs official,
                                       most courteous Iooking.
Folks hand in their passports
                                              and I hand in mine,
my crimson-jacketed
                                  bookling.
Some passports
                         bring smiles
                                             in a matter of instants.
Others 
          are fit but to fie on. 
Special deference
                            is shown,
                                          for instance
for those 
              with the double-bed
                                               British Leo.
Bowing non-stop,
                            as if rocked by a ship, 
eating their eyes
                           into the "kind old uncles", 
they take,
               as if they were taking a tip 
the passports
                     of lanky Yankees. 
At Polish passports
                              they bulge out their eyes
in thick-skulled
                         policemen's
                                           donkeyness,
as if to say:
                  what
                         the devil are these 
geographical
                     novelties?
Without even turning
                                 their cabbage-like heads,
hardly deigning
                          to touch them, 
they take,
               absent-minded,
                                        the passports of Swedes
and all sorts
                    of other Dutchmen. 
But suddenly
                    Mr. Officer's face
                                               turns awry,
as if
       he has smelled disaster. 
You've guessed it:
                             the officer's taken my 
red-skinned hulk of a passport. 
He handles it
                     like a hedgehog
                                              or bomb,
like a bee
                to be nipped
                                     by the wings,
like a twisting rattlesnake
                                         three yards long
with a hundred
                        deadly stings.
The porter winks;
                            to tell the truth, 
he'd carry your luggage
                                     free
                                           all the way for you.
The gendarme
                       looks questioningly
                                                     at the sleuth, 
the sleuth looks back:
                                  what to do with this wayfarer?
With what delight,
                           by the gendarmes,
                                                       damn it,
I'd be flayed,
                   crucified,
                                hanged
for the crime of holding
                                      a sickled,
                                                     hammered
Soviet passport
                        in my hand!
I'd rip out bureaucracy's guts,
                                              I would.
No reverence for mandates -
                                               good riddance!
Pack off to very hell
                               for good
any old paper,
                      but this one...
As
    the most valuable
                                of certificates
I pull it
            from the pants
                                   where my documents are:
read it
          envy me -
                           I'm a citizen
of the USSR!

1929
 
 
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg
Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Selected works in three volumes / Moscow : Raduga, 1985