Mayakovsky's Niece

How the words rush like a delerious torrent
cutting with the icy crisp of a Moscow winter,
but it's Spring in Melbourne
and my head spins from
a fermented monologue,
demented lines of years gone
dredged from the Slavonic Review,
hurled to the end of the earth with
the cynical
caustic voice of an old man
with black cats.

I leap from the wheelchair and shout
"Stop!
You shake babies' rattles to entertain sages!
Why?
I'm old
a thousand years old
but I see that in you an anguished cry
has been crucified on a cross of laughter."

I stumble through post-revolutionary streets
cigarette hanging from my lips,
drunk on words
intoxicated with the times,
but no!
I am not Mayakovsky
just an actor in "A Tragedy"
for it is seventy years since the revolution
and though glasnost and perestroika are sweeping the streets
the Futurist vision still lives,
still screams,
still slaps public taste in the face.

In a satori
epitomising the nexus of life and art
an exhibition of Mayakovsky's posters has
come to the gallery,
we are premiering that night
so with the 'Women with Tears’
I hurry to St Kilda Road,
pursuing inspiration
hoping to look deeper into the heart of the poet.

I stare into the photo of a young
unbelievably intense man,
his eyes stares back
lips curled in a sardonic smile,
I swear his expression changed
just for an instant
but no,
it's still Melbourne in Spring,
I'm still in love
outside the traffic growls
flowers are in bloom.

I notice an elderly grey haired woman
sitting on a stool
sketching a poster,
intrigued we approach her
for Mayakovsky is obscure in Australia
and there are no others browsing the exhibition,
waving her hand she dismisses us,
absorbed in her work.

I'm surrounded by images of revolution
then look more deeply to see idealism perverted,
exhortations to improve public health
transformed into Stalinist diatribes
against wreckers,
against traitors,
graphic appeals to improve education
twisted into paranoid polemnics against capitalists and spies.

The old woman approaches us and apologises,
in fine English she explains
she is with the exhibition,
that she is a Russian poet and artist,
then to our surprise
that she is Mayakovsky's niece,
that she remembers him from her childhood,
an enormous bear of a man with
a huge booming voice,
how he used to sit her on his knee,
she remembers the sadness in his eyes.

The circle closes,
I tell her we are staging her uncle's play
and she is delighted,
she wishes us well and
we are blessed,
but I am haunted by the tragedy of Russia
echoing the tragedy of Mayakovsky,
feel the despair of the poet
hounded by the dark forces he hoped
revolution would dispel,
I see the poet crushed within his prophecy
but hear his words resounding through my mind;

"Don't let hate pierce your hearts!
For you, my children, the lesson is hard and relentless.
People, you are all bells on the dunce cap of God."

Vladimir Mayakovsky shot himself on April 14th, 1930.