Inventory of the Poet
(For Vladimir Mayakovsky)

Mad boiling train,
frenzy loud on rickety track,
you view a hand-hewn world,
vast white,
vast country
of Cathedral builders.

Possessed and obsessed
like your new heros,
you are armed
with the unrelenting past,
that dark abysm of time.
Yet you attempt Futurism.

Heavy cargo loaded,
your boat crashed,

and delicate romance was
the first to shatter.
Did you know you would sleep in
Novo-Devechy with Gogol
and Stalin's wife?