Poetry corner

Inspired by Zoot Horn's poetry lecture and the subsequent seminar, here's the Mayakovsky poem we looked at - now I'm living in the urban centre, it means a lot more to me.

Great Big Hell Of A City

Windows split the city's great hell
into tiny hellets - vamps with lamps
The cars, red devils, exploded their yells
right in your ear, rearing on their rumps.

And there, under the sign-board with herrings from kerch
an old man, knocked down, stooping to search
for his specs, sobbed aloud when a tram with a lurch
whipped out its eyeballs in the twilight splurge.

In the gaps between skyscrapers, full of blazing ore,
where the steel of trains came clattering by
an aeroplane fell with a final roar
into the fluid oozing from the sun's hurt eye

Only then, crumpling the blanket of lights
Night loved itself out, lewd and drunk,
and beyond the street-suns, the sorriest of sights,
sank the flabby moon, unwanted old junk.

(1913!)