P191
CONVERSATION WITH A TAX COLLECTOR ABOUT POETRY

Citizen tax collector!
			Forgive my bothering you ...
Thank you...
		don't worry...
				I'll stand...
My business 
	    is
		of delicate nature:
about the place
		of the poet
			    in the workers' ranks.
Along with
	  owners 
		of stores and property
I'm made subject
		to taxes and penalties.
You demand
	   I pay
		 five hundred for the half year
and twenty-five
		for failing to send in my returns.
Now
    my work 
            is like
  		    any other work.
Look here --	
	     how much I've lost,
what expenses
     	     I have in my production
and how much I spend
		     on my materials.
You know,
	  of course,
		    about "rhyme."
Suppose
        a line
	       ends with the word
				  "day,"
and then,
	 repeating the syllables
				in the third line,
we insert 
	 something like
			"tarara-boom-de-ay."
In your idiom,
	       rhyme
		     is a bill of exchange
to be honored in the third line! --
				    that's the rul.
And so you hunt
	for the small change of suffixes and flections
in the depleted cashbox
			of conjugations
				     and declensions.
You start shoving 
		a word
		      into the line,
but it's a tight fit -
		    you press and it breaks.
Citizen tax collector,
		    honestly,
the poet
        spends a fortune on words.
In our idiom
	    rhyme
		  is a keg.
A keg of dynamite.
		  The line
			   is a fuse.
The line burns to the end
			  and explodes,
and the town
	     is blown sky-high
			       in a strophe.
Where can you find,
		   and at what price,
rhymes
	that take aim and kill on the spot?
Suppose
       only half a dozen
			unheard-of rhymes
were left,
	in, say, Venezuela.
And so
	I'm drawn
		to North and South.
I rush around
	     entangled in advances and loans.
Citizen!
	Consider my traveling expenses.
-- Poetry --
	--all of it!--
		is a journey to the unknown.
Poetry
	is like mining radium.
For every gram
	      you work a year.
For the sake of a single word
				you waste
a thousand tons
		of verbal ore.
But now
	incendiary
		 the burning of these words
compared
	with the smoldering
			   of the raw material.
These words
	   will move
millions of hearts
		for thousands of years.
Of course,
	there are many kinds of poets.
So many of them
		use legerdemain!
And,
    like conjurers,
		 pull lines from their mouths --
their own --
		and other people's.
Not to speak
	      of the lyrical castrates?!
They're only too glad
		    to shove in
				a borrowed line.
This is 
	just one more case
			of robbery and embezzlement
among the frauds rampant in the country.
These 
      verses and odes
		     bawled out
				today
amidst applause,
		will go down
in history
	  as the overhead expenses
of what
	two or three of us
			   have achieved.
As the saying goes,
		  you eat forty pounds
				   of table salt,
and smoke
	 a hundred cigarettes
in order
	to dredge up
		    one precious word
from artesian
	      human depths.
So at once
	  my tax
		shrinks.
Strike out
	  one wheeling zero
			  from the balance due!
For a hundred cigaretts --
			a ruble ninety;
for table salt --
		a ruble sixty.
Your form
	has a mass of questions:
"Have you travled on business
			     or not?"
But suppose
	   I have
		 ridden to death
a hundred Pegasi
		in the last
			  15 years?
And here you have --
		imagine my feelings! --
something 
	about servants
			and assets.
But what if I am
		simultaneously
				a leader
and a servant
	   	of the people?
The working class
		speaks
			through my mouth,
and we,
	proletarians,
		 	are drivers of the pen.
As the years go by,
		   you wear out
				the machine of the soul.
And people say:
		"A back number,
				he's written out,
				   he's through!"
There's less and less love,
			  and less and less daring,
and time
	is a battering ram
			against my head.
Then there's amortization,
			the deadliest of all;
amortization
	   of the heart and soul.
And when
	the sun
		like a fattened hog
rises
	on a future
		  without beggars and cripples,
I shall
	already
		be a putrefied corpse
					under a fence,
together
	with a dozen
		    of my colleagues.
Draw up
	my
	  posthumous balance!
I hereby declare --
		 and I'm telling no lies:
Among 
	today's 
		swindlers and dealers,
I alone
	shall be sunk
			in hopeless debt.
Our duty is
	  to blare
		like brass-throated horns
in the fogs of bourgeois vulgarity
				and seething storms.
A poet
	is always
		indebted to the universe,
paying,
	alas,
	     interest
			and fines.
I am
	indebted
		to the lights of the Broadway,
to you,
	to the skies of Bagdadi,
to the Red Army,
		to the cherry trees of Japn --
to everything
	about which
		I have not yet written.
But, after all,
		who needs
			all this stuff?
Is its aim to rhyme
		and rage in rhythm?
No, a poet's word
		is your resurrection
and your immortality,
			citizen and official.
Centuries hence,
		take a line of verse
from its paper frame
		and bring back time!
And this day
		with its tax collectors,
its aura of miracles
			and its stench of ink,
will dawn again.
Convinced dweller in the present day,
go
   to the N.K.P.S.(*5),
		take a ticket to immortality
and, reckoning
		the effect
			of my verse,
stagger my earnings
		over three hundred years!
But the poet is strong
			not only because,
remembering you,
		the people of the future
					will hiccup.
No!
   Nowadays too
		the poet's rhyme
is a caress
	  and a slogan,
			a bayonet
				and a knout!
Citizen tax collector,
			I'll cross out
all the zeros
	   after the five
			and pay the rest.
I demand
	as my right
		an inch of ground
among 
   	the poorest
		workers and peasants.
And if
	you think
		that all i have to do
is to profit
	by other people's words,
then,
	comrades,
		here's my pen.
Take
	a crack at it
		yourselves!
(1926) 	
From:		
Vladimir Mayakovsky the Bedbug 
and selected poetry
edited with an introduction by Patricia Black
translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey