A Song For Himself the Beloved Author Sings Poem by Robert Dawson

A Song For Himself the Beloved Author Sings

Vladimir Mayakovsky
A SONG FOR HIMSELF,
THE BELOVED AUTHOR SINGS

A man like me,
Where can he bury his head?

Were I as shallow
As deeprunning seas,
I'd tiptoe the waves
And woo the moon like the tide.
Where shall I find
A loved, beloved one like me?
She'd be too deep for a sea.

To be poor!
Be a multibillionaire!
Ach, what is Kapital to the soul?
It rides like a bandit the soul's hills.
Gold from every California
Could not feather that nest of thieves.

Like Dante
To be tongue-tied
Or Petrarch!
Splinter my heart and kindle
For one Love only?
I'd rhyme her to ash!
Then if my words, my love,
Were an arch,
Through it history's sad lovers
Would march
Leaving no footprints.

Oh, if I were
Quiet as thunder,
I would howl
And clinch Earth's hermitage in a shudder.
If
To its final stops I pumped
My voice,
Comets would wring their hands,
Dive anguished,
Headlong.

With my eyes' sabre I'd split the night,
Were I as dull as the Sun!
Why should I fill
Earth's lean lap!

Passing, I pause
To shift the burden I love.
In what delicious
Sickly
Night
Was I foaled of Titans …
I, so large,
So undesired?

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
My loose translation of Mayakovsky
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