To His Own Beloved Self The Author Dedicates This Lines. original
Six.
Ponderous. The chimes of a clock. "Render unto Ceasar... render unto God..." But where's someone like me to dock? Where to find waiting -- a lair?
Were I like the ocean of ocean little, on the tiptoes of waves I'd rise, I'd strain, a tide, to caress the moon. Where to find someone to love of my size, the sky too small for her to fit in?
Were I poor as a multimillionaire, it'd still be tough. What's money for the soul? -- Theif insatiable. The gold of all Californias isn't enough for my desires' riotous horde.
I wish I were tongue-tied, like Dante or Petrarch, able to fire a woman's heart, reduce it to ashes with verse-filled pages! My words and my love form a triumphal arch: through it in all their splendour, leaving no trace,will pass the inamoratas of all the ages.
Where I As quiet as thunder, how I'd wail and whine! One groan of mine would start world's crumbling cloister shivering. And if I'd end up by roaring with all of its power of lungs and more -- the comets, distressed, would wring their hands and from the sky's roof leap in fever.
If I were dim as the sun, night I'd drill with the rays of my eyes, and also all by my lonesome, radiant self build up the earth's shivering bosom.
On I'll pass, dragging my huge love behind me. On what feverish night, deliria-ridden, by what Goliaths was I begot -- I, so big and so no one needen?
1916. By Vladimir Mayakovskiy. Translated by Irina
Zheleznova.