Letter from Paris to Comrade Kostrov

Letter from Paris to Comrade Kostrov on the Nature of Love

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1928)

Love

for us

is no paradise of arbors –

to us

love

tells us, humming,

that the stalled motor

of the heart

has started to work

again.

... love will always hum –

love,

human and simple.

Hurricane,

fire,

water.

surge forward, rumbling.

Who

can

control this?

Can you?

Try it ...

(translated by Max Hayward, from Mayakovsky: The Bedbug and Selected Poetry, Indiana University Press, 1975)