A ROSTA window by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Welcome back to the Breaking Time, dear readers. My regrets about that unfortunate intermission, but sometimes duty calls and there's simply no way around it.
For this Friday's poem we've got "Our March" by the brilliant Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky (you should also read his work A Cloud in Trousers). It's got all the hallmarks of the great futurist anthems — the fiery call to break with the past chief among them — that still make it bracing stuff in our own day. It dates from 1917: a catastrophic Breaking Time if ever there was one, full of hope, collapse and danger.
Mayakovsky did much in his relatively brief life. In addition to his poetic and dramatic work, he also, with Lilya Brik and Mikhail Cheremnykh, played a key role in creating modern propaganda. Their efforts, especially the famous ROSTA (the Soviet telegraph service) windows, helped the Bolsheviks rally support and win the brutal, fractious civil war wracking Russia at the time.
Mayakovksy ended his own life in 1930. It's a major understatement to say that the revolution he worked so hard for turned out to be a very different creature than he expected. Keep that in mind as you read his call to arms — or today's.
Beat the tramp of revolt in the square!
Up, row of proud heads!
We will wash every city in the world
With the surging waters
of a second Flood.
The bull of the days is skewbald.
The cart of the years is slow.
Our god is speed.
The heart is our drum.
Is there a gold more heavenly than ours?
Can the wasp of a bullet sting us?
Our songs are our weapons;
Ringing voices -- our gold.
Meadows, be covered with grass,
Spread out a ground for the days.
Rainbow, harness
the fast-flying horses of the years.
See, the starry heaven is bored!
We weave our songs without its help.
Hey, you, Great Bear, demand
that they take us up to heaven alive!
Drink joys! Sing!
Spring flows in our veins.
Beat to battle, heart!
Our breast is a copper kettledrum.
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