Talking to Vladimir Mayakovsky

All right, I admit it:

It was just a dream I had last night.

I was trudging along a muddy path

in a column of downcast men

on the blackened outskirts of New York,

the twilight dingy and ruined,

the future without hope

as we marched along

in our soiled, proletarian rags.

To my left was Mayakovsky, head shaved,

and next to him his friend

with gray beard and dark cap.

"You've got to admit," Mayakovsky

was saying, "that this is a pretty good

way to write a poem."

"Yes," I said, "the momentum

is sustained by our walking forward,

the desolate landscape seeps into every word,

and you're free to say anything you want."

"That's because we're inside the poem,"

he said, "not outside." Puddles

of oily water gleamed dully beneath the low clouds.

"That's why my poems were so big:

there's more room inside."

The hard line of his jaw flexed and

the men dispersed. I followed

his friend behind a wall

to hear the poem go on

in the lecture the friend was giving on history,

but no, the real poem had finished.

I went back to the spot

where the poem had finished.

Vladimir had left the poem.

Source: Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2013)