Brooklyn Bridge
Proclaim, Coolidge,
a shout of joy!
To the good
and I don’t apologize for the words.
Blush red
from my praise
like the flag of our motherland,
even if you’re
the disunited states of
America.
Like an obsessed believer
goes
to church,
Withdrawing,
austere and simple,
to a cell, -
So I
at a vespers
seeming so gray,
Walk onto,
humble, the Brooklyn Bridge.
As into a city,
into its destruction,
the conqueror makes his way
on cannons - with a muzzle
as tall as a giraffe -
so, giddy with glory,
satisfied at nothing,
I clamber up,
proud,
onto the Brooklyn Bridge.
Like an idiot artist
into the museum's madonna
thrusts his eye,
enamored and sharp,
so I,
from a sky,
peppered with stars
look
at New York
through the Brooklyn Bridge.
New York
until the evening heavy
and stifling,
I forgot
how heavy it is
and tall,
and it’s only
hobgoblin spirits
that rise up
in the clear luminescence of the windows.
Here
it hardly itches,
the elevators’ itch.
And it’s only
by this quiet itch
that you will understand -
the trains creeping along, rattling,
as though
putting the dishes in the cupboard.
When then,
it seemed, from down river
a peddler began
delivering sugar
from the mill, -
that
under the bridge the passing masts
measured
no more than the size of pins.
I’m proud
here’s this mile of steel,
alive from it
my visions have risen -
a struggle
for structures
rather than fashions,
a rough accounting
of nuts
and steel.
If
it comes
the end of the world -
chaos
will polish
the planet,
and the only
thing left will be
this,
erected over the dust of ruination a bridge,
then
in the way that from bones,
more slender than needles,
they grow stout
the dinosaurs
mounted in museums,
so
from this bridge
a geologist in days to come
will be able
to reconstruct
the present day.
He will say:
- You see this
steel paw
that united
the seas and the prairies,
from here
Europe
burst into the West,
throwing
to the wind
Indian feathers.
It looks like
a machine
this rib here -
think about it,
are there enough hands,
to, standing
with a steel foot
on Manhattan,
to pull Brooklyn
by its lip
all this way?
By the wires
of the electric strand -
I know -
after the steam
age -
here
people
already
were shouting on the radio,
here
people
already
were soaring in the air.
Here
life
was for some - carefree,
for others -
a famished prolonged wail.
From here
the unemployed
into the Hudson
threw themselves
head first.
Next
my painting
without a snag
along strings - the cables
right to the feet of the stars.
I see -
here
stood Mayakovsky,
stood
and wrote poetry syllable by syllable -
I’m watching,
like an eskimo looking at a train,
I bite,
like a tick bites into an ear.
Brooklyn Bridge -
Oh yes…
That’s the thing!
Vladimir Mayakovsky - 1925
translation - Barry Link
