FOR SHRIVELLED PROPHETS
To you, poets of the state, petty waiters,
to you I give my word, my wrath.
Don’t make romanticism
from the red blood of your brothers!
Become drunken with glory, with wine,
call yourselves the high priests of beauty –
but don’t cry, don’t wail over coffins
like dogs.
You find false aestheticism and grace
even at gravesites.
What can a universal federation mean for you,
corrupt merchandisers of inspiration and slaves?
What can brotherhood mean when you have eroticism? –
Shut up, move away from the graves!
From you, as though from a crooked wick,
the Revolution just smolders...
1920