2

     A FEW WORDS ABOUT MY WIFE

Along far beaches of uncharted seas

the moon-

my wife-goes driving.

She’s redhaired, my beloved.

Behind her turnout,

a variegated throng of constellations scurries,

screaming.

She weds with a garage,

kisses newspaper kiosks,

while a fluttering-eyed page tinsels her train, the

          Milky Way.

And I?

To me, ablaze, the yoke of brows

has lugged fresh pails from deep-eyed wells.

In lacustrine silks you hung,

an amber fiddle chanting in your thighs?

You threw no baited line

into the regions of malignant roofs.

In sands’ nostalgia bathed, I drown in boulevards;

for that’s your daughter-

my song

in mesh of stocking gliding

by the coffee houses!

-V.Mayakovsky

(Translation by M.Hayward and G.Reavey)