Vladimir Mayakovsky | Vorovsky (english version)
Translated by Dorian Rottenberg | From Vladimir Mayakovsky, Mayakovsky. Selected Verse (Volume 1), Raduga, 1985
Senza nulla togliere alla traduzione italiana proponiamo anche quella inglese che si apprezza per la sua maggiore chiarezza (Antiper).
Proletariat,
unchain your voices’ thunder,forget
universal clemency’s softness.Murdered
by a gang of fascists and plunderers,for the last time
through Moscow
today goes Vorovsky.How many will go yet .. .
How many have gone.How many-to shreds,..
into smithereens. . .Some may surrender.
Some lose vim.Yet we haven’t
and won’t give in!Mould
your wrath
in a bomb’s great ball.Let voices
today
cut like bayonet-lightning;become a bogy
for capitalists all.On royal curtains flit,
spectral and frightening.With a million feet’s thunder
answer blatant notes.Let millions queue,
serpentine,
by the Kremlin.Let a comrade’s death
affirm beyond all doubtsthe deathlessness of Communism,
making enemies tremble.
(1923)
