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To All and Everything

 No.
It can’t be.
No! You too, beloved? Why? What for? Darling, look - I came, I brought flowers, but, but.
.
.
I never took silver spoons from your drawer! Ashen-faced, I staggered down five flights of stairs.
The street eddied round me.
Blasts.
Blares.
Tires screeched.
It was gusty.
The wind stung my cheeks.
Horn mounted horn lustfully.
Above the capital’s madness I raised my face, stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent, on your body as on a death-bed, its days my heart ended.
You did not sully your hands with brute murder.
Instead, you let drop calmly: “He’s in bed.
There’s fruit and wine On the bedstand’s palm.
” Love! You only existed in my inflamed brain.
Enough! Stop this foolish comedy and take notice: I’m ripping off my toy armour, I, the greatest of all Don Quixotes! Remember? Weighed down by the cross, Christ stopped for a moment, weary.
Watching him, the mob yelled, jeering: “Get movin’, you clod!” That’s right! Be spiteful.
Spit upon him who begs for a rest on his day of days, harry and curse him.
To the army of zealots, doomed to do good, man shows no mercy! That does it! I swear by my pagan strength - gimme a girl, young, eye-filling, and I won’t waste my feelings on her.
I'll rape her and spear her heart with a gibe willingly.
An eye for an eye! A thousand times over reap of revenge the crops' Never stop! Petrify, stun, howl into every ear: “The earth is a convict, hear, his head half shaved by the sun!” An eye for an eye! Kill me, bury me - I’ll dig myself out, the knives of my teeth by stone — no wonder!- made sharper, A snarling dog, under the plank-beds of barracks I’ll crawl, sneaking out to bite feet that smell of sweat and of market stalls! You'll leap from bed in the night’s early hours.
“Moo!” I’ll roar.
Over my neck, a yoke-savaged sore, tornados of flies will rise.
I'm a white bull over the earth towering! Into an elk I’ll turn, my horns-branches entangled in wires, my eyes red with blood.
Above the world, a beast brought to bay, I'll stand tirelessly.
Man can’t escape! Filthy and humble, a prayer mumbling, on cold stone he lies.
What I’ll do is paint on the royal gates, over God’s own the face of Razin.
Dry up, rivers, stop him from quenching his thirst! Scorn him! Don’t waste your rays, sun! Glare! Let thousands of my disciples be born to trumpet anathemas on the squares! And when at last there comes, stepping onto the peaks of the ages, chillingly, the last of their days, in the black souls of anarchists and killers I, a gory vision, will blaze! It’s dawning, The sky’s mouth stretches out more and more, it drinks up the night sip by sip, thirstily.
The windows send off a glow.
Through the panes heat pours.
The sun, viscous, streams down onto the sleeping city.
O sacred vengeance! Lead me again above the dust without and up the steps of my poetic lines.
This heart of mine, full to the brim, in a confession I will pour out.
Men of the future! Who are you? I must know.
Please! Here am I, all bruises and aches, pain-scorched.
.
.
To you of my great soul I bequeath the orchard.

Poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky
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Book: Reflection on the Important Things