V. V. Mayakovsky - To Sergei Esenin

You have passed, as they say, into worlds elsewhere.

Emptiness...

Fly, cutting your way into starry dubiety.

No advances, no pubs for you there.

Sobriety.

No, Yessenin, this is not deridingly,-

in my throat not laughter but sorrow racks.

I see - your cut-open hand maddeningly,

swings your own bones like a sack.

Stop it, chuck it! Isn't it really absurd?

Allowing cheeks to flush with deathly hue?

You who could do such things with words,

that no one else on earth could do.

Why, for what? Perplexity appalls.

Critics mutter: "The main fault we find

there was hardly any working-class contact at all,

as a result of too much beer and wine."

So to say, if you had swopped bohemianism for class,

there'd have been no bust-up, Found at More...