Mayakovsky - Shallow philosophy on deep waters

Gonna turn
if not into Tolstoy*, then into a fat sea-buoy –
   eat,
        write,
                heat-stricken.
Who hasn’t philosophized on deep waters? 
Waters.


Yesterday,
  the ocean was wickedly
                fierce.               
Today,
        it is meeker
                than dove hatching. 
So what!
         All things disperse …       
All things are changing. 
               
               
There’s 
       an order
            in ocean waters:
Ebb,
       or flow. 
While Steklov’s pen
                has constant waters
In defiance of a law.

 
Dead fish
           swim alone.
Flippers hang like they’re broken.      
It swims
            for weeks,
And don’t care
            if it's got any token.               


Opposite us,
          slower than a seal,
A steamer from Mexico,
           While we sail thither.
Can’t be different.
Labour division.


This is a whale, - they say.
            Could be.
Like our fishy Bedny** – not thin.         

Only, Damian has moustaches looking outward,
                While the whale’s -
Within.


Years – sea gulls.
            Rush in the sky –
And - hurtle in waters -
              to feed their bellies.
No more seagulls.
                Actually,
Where are the birdies ?


I was born,
           grown,
                fed with a comforter,
Worked,
           become worn-out…
Here’s how life would pass
             as we've just passed
the Asore Islands.


July 3, 1925
Atlantic Ocean


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* Wordplay: "Tolstoy" means fat - VP
** Damian Bedny - Russian poet, satirist (1889-1945)



2013, VP