1913 at Luna Park in St Petersburg

Man With One Eye and One Leg
Stop!
On the street -
where everyone wears,
like a burden,
the same face -
Old Lady TIme just now gave birth
to a huge
revolt wearing a grimace!
What a laugh!
Old-timers went numb when they saw the snouts
of the years that came crawling out;
on the foreheads of cities
anger swelled up into the rivers
of thousand-mile-long veins.
Slowly,
in terror,
arrows of hair rose up on the bald pate of Time.
Suddenly,
all things went rushing off, ripping
their voices,
and casting off tatters of outworn names.
Wineshop windows, all on their own,
splashed in the bottoms of bottles,
as through stirred by the finger of Satan.
From the shop of a tailor who’d fainted,
trousers escaped
and went walking along -
alone,
without human buttocks!!!
Out of a bedroom,
a drunken commode -
its black maw agape -
case stumbling.
Corsets wept, afraid of tumbling
down from signs reading “ROBES ET MODES.”
Every galosh was stern and straitlaced.
Stockings, like sluts,
winked flirty eyes.
I flew along like a violent curse.
My other leg is still trying to catch up -
it’s a block behind.
What do you mean,
you people,
proclaiming that I’m Cripple?
You old,
fat,
paunchy
enemies?
Today,
in the whole, you won’t find
one person
with two
identical knees!!!


CURTAIN

- Mayakovsky, A Tragedy