[Carl Copeland]

I’m posting this translation over here because it isn’t mine. It is masterful and worth musing on, as of course is the original, my favorite of Mayakovsky’s American poems. The translator, Theo Merrill Sparks, was an American entertainer, songwriter, poet and improbably prolific translator, judging from his 400 pages in Modern Russian Poetry (MacGibbon & Kee, 1966). He would have turned 100 this year. Mayakovsky’s basic form—jazzed up with irregularities, slant rhymes and stairstep lineation—is still the classic Russian iambic tetrameter. Sparks is even less regular and more sparsely rhymed, but he’s got enough to keep me grooving. I tinkered with a few lines, but the translation’s splendid breeziness is all his. Enjoy (and see if you can catch Mayakovsky’s factual error)!

Brooklyn Bridge

Hey, Coolidge boy,
give a shout of joy!
When a thing is good
                               then it’s good.
Blush from compliments
                                   like our flag’s calico,
even though you’re
                            the most super-united states
                                                                      of
America.
Like the crazy believer
                                who goes
                                               to his church
or retreats
                to a monastery
                                      simple and rigid –
so I
       in the gray haze
                               of evening
humbly
           approach
                         the Brooklyn Bridge.
Like a conqueror
                        on cannons with muzzles
                                                            as high as a giraffe
jabbing into a broken
                               city besieged,
so, drunk with glory,
                             alive to the hilt,
I clamber
              proudly
                         upon Brooklyn Bridge.
Like a stupid painter
                             whose enamored eyes pierce
a museum Madonna
                              like a wedge.
So from this firmament,
                                  speckled with stars,
I look at New York
                           through Brooklyn Bridge.
New York,
               heavy and stifling
                                         till night,
has forgotten
                   what makes it dizzy
                                               and a hindrance,
and only
             the souls of buildings
rise in the transparent
                                sheen of windows.
Here the itching hum
                               of the ‘el’
                                             is hardly heard,
and only by this
                        hum,
                                soft but stubborn,
can you feel the trains
                                 crawl
                                         with a rattle
as when dishes
                      are jammed into a cupboard.
And when from a mill
                               at the river’s edge
a merchant
                 transports sugar
                                         heaped in bins –
then
       the masts passing under the bridge
are no bigger
                    in size
                              than pins.
I’m proud
               of this
                         mile of steel.
In it my visions
                       are alive and real –
a fight
          for structure
                             instead of arty style,
the harsh calculation
                               of bolts
                                           and steel.
If the end
               of the world
                                 comes –
and chaos
               wipes out
                              this earth
and if only this
                      bridge
                                remains
rearing over the dust of death,
then
       as little bones,
                             thinner than needles,
clad with flesh,
                      standing in museums,
                                                      are dinosaurs,
so from this
                  bridge
                            future geologists
will be able
                 to reconstruct
                                      our present course.
They will say:
                    this
                          paw of steel
joined seas,
                 prairies and deserts,
from here,
                Europe
                           rushed to the West,
scattering
               to the wind
                                Indian feathers.
This rib here
                   reminds us
                                    of a machine –
imagine,
             hands with a good enough grip,
while standing
                     with one steel leg
                                               in Manhattan,
to drag
           toward yourself
                                  Brooklyn by the lip!
By the wires
                  of electric yarn
I know this
                 is
                     the Post-Steam Era.
Here people
                  already
                             yelled on the radio,
here people
                 already
                            flew by air.
For some
              here was life
                                 carefree,
                                              unalloyed.
For others
               a prolonged
                                 howl of hunger.
From here
                the unemployed
jumped headfirst
                         into
                               the Hudson.
And now,
              strung on cables
                                      without a hitch,
my canvas extends
                            to the foot of the stars,
and I see:
               here
                      stood Mayakovsky,
here he stood
                     putting
                                syllable to syllable.
I look,
          as an eskimo looks at a train,
I dig into you,
                     like a tick into an ear.
Brooklyn Bridge.
Yes,
       you’ve got something here.