Wednesday, April 14, 2004
A Slap In The Face Of Public Taste
I, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY
REVOLUTIONARY AT TWELVE
BOLSHEVICK AT FIFTEEN
IN PRISON BECAME THE POET OF THE PEOPLE
I don't usually pick up on Chris' dead socialists, but Mayakovsky, whose anniversary is today, is a particular favourite of mine. His part in the futurist movement is quite fun, and he's also on a dead-socialist-style list of mine of famous suicides. But unfortunately that list (about five years old), with all its accompanying material, has disappeared somewhere into the ether. All I remember from his entry now are some lines from his last unfinished poem, "At The Top Of My Voice":
The sea goes to weep.
The sea goes to sleep.
As they say,
the incident is closed.
The love boat of life
has crashed on philistine reefs
You and I are quits.
No need to reiterate
mutual hurts,
sorrows and pains.
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