_______________________________________<\/p>\n
Translated<\/em> by Lika Galkina and Jasper Goss, 2005.<\/em><\/p>\n
The drum of war thunders and thunders.
\nIt calls: thrust iron into the living.
\nFrom every country
\nslave after slave
\nare thrown onto bayonet steel.
\nFor the sake of what?
\nThe earth shivers
\nhungry
\nand stripped.
\nMankind is vapourised in a blood bath
\nonly so
\nsomeone
\nsomewhere
\ncan get hold of Albania.
\nHuman gangs bound in malice,
\nblow after blow strikes the world
\nonly for
\nsomeone\u2019s vessels
\nto pass without charge
\nthrough the Bosporus.
\nSoon
\nthe world
\nwon\u2019t have a rib intact.
\nAnd its soul will be pulled out.
\nAnd trampled down
\nonly for someone,
\nto lay
\ntheir hands on
\nMesopotamia.
\nWhy does
\na boot
\ncrush the Earth \u2014 fissured and rough?
\nWhat is above the battles\u2019 sky –
\nFreedom?
\nGod?
\nMoney!
\nWhen will you stand to your full height,
\nyou,
\ngiving them your life?
\nWhen will you hurl a question to their faces:
\nWhy are we fighting?<\/p>\n
1917<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n _______________________________________<\/p>\n Translated<\/em> by Lika Galkina and Jasper Goss, 2005.<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Vladimir-Mayakovsky.jpg\")
<\/a>Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (19 July\u00a01893 \u2013 14 April 1930) was a Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist, and actor. Though his work regularly demonstrated ideological and patriotic support for the ideology of the Bolsheviks and a strong admiration of Vladimir Lenin, his relationship with the Soviet state was always complex and often tumultuous. Mayakovsky often found himself engaged in confrontation with the increasing involvement of the Soviet state in cultural censorship and the development of the State doctrine of Socialist realism.<\/em><\/p>\n