All Quiet In The West
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Translated by Katya Kazbek
Asphalt as clean
as the conscience of a dove.
Pavement panels
like a banker’s bald head.
(After the corpses
into the trucks
have been loaded off
and the pavement’s been washed
where blood had spilled red.)
On the boulevards
tiny bougie babes
to nannies’ stories
pet their teddy bears’ tender plush
(After cartridges
have been filled with gas
and to Poland at midnight
missiles have noisily rushed.)
Peacekeepers giving off
a cylinder luster,
blistering tongues
put against swords.
(After rifles have been sent
to the Afghans
and to the Basmaches—
the bombs.)
Dismounted hussars
are sat in cafes.
Infantry rejoicing
In civvy sloth.
Beneath this idyll
the feverish,
frenzied
war preparations
and oaths.
With blood droplets
earth has been dotted
fittingly shaped
like a sphere.
Hiding,
as of yet unspotted
someone is shooting
someone else
from the rear.
For the very core,
for the heart they aim.
There’s one desire
to these commander-hawks:
to have the lonely rebels tamed
and then to its slaughter
to herd the flock.
Today it’s the small skirmishes
losing blood.
Tomorrow, into the crowd
tanks will scud
War will get to savor
the taste of gore
Armored birdies
will start firing hard
of iron and gas
their bloody manure.
Look, here it marches,
a beautiful horse
clattering its bones from the distant years.
On it, the yellowish skeleton
of the war
and the death’s scythe
shining with bluish steel.
We’re the delectable cannon fodder
who buy prosthetics
and crutches wholesale
We’ll come out to the streets
on the 1st of August
and to the sky, our protest
we’ll nail.
No place for the powder keg politics
in our present,
no more cowering at home,
laying low.
Away from the first republic
of workers and peasants,
the bayoneted tentacles
of war we’ll throw.
We demand peace
but if you interfere
we’ll get into a squadron,
clench our teeth in a grunt.
In front of the massacre’s instigators
will appear
a united insurgent
workers’ front.
1929