Vladimir Mayakovsky — The Story of Vlas

A sweet boy

Vlas Skipkin

Brought to bed

His magazine.

“This whole magazine,

It grips me!

I’ll read the whole thing

If it rips me!”

Both his mother

And his dad

Couldn’t make him

Go to bed.

At sunrise he falls asleep

Squirming,

bed-sheets

in a lump,

At the hour

when other

kids

Start

to get up with a jump.

While

the other little ones

Enjoy their tea, awakened,

His father

yells:

“Get up at once!”

Yet

on his ears – a blanket!

All the kids

went off

to classes;

At the tap

the half-nude

Vlas is:

So that at school he wouldn’t doze,

He’ll wet his brow

and wash his nose.

Without tea

and without rolls

He leaves home.

He barely crawls.

He took some steps

and stopped to gawp:

There’s a sign above a shop.

That’s what literacy’s for!

Gotta read

the sign

above the store.

From front

to back

he’s reading on,

It comes out

“Coiffeur Simon”;

He reads it backwards,

our smart doc:

“Nomis,” it comes out,

“Rueffioc.”

Skipkin mused,

five minutes or so,

And again

he moved to go.

But there,

up on the third floor

A sign glows

for the TEJE* store!

He read.

He went.

Three minutes, and

By two storefronts

he’s stuck again.

With this and that,

to the school’s gate

He arrived

immensely late.

The doors are locked.

Vlas tried to pass,

But they won’t let Vlas

go to class!

Now, in waiting

there’s no point.

“Guess I’ll play

a game

of coins!”

He tossed a fiver and

he lost,

Couldn’t leave it as it was…

In a word,

before he knew why,

Three hours

flew swiftly by.

What to do?

The outcome’s plain:

He returned

to whence he came!

With his mopeyness

apparent

To his neighbors and his parents.

Sonny,

why’d you look

so sad?

“Oh, my head hurts really bad.

It was splitting so

in class,

Even one class

I could not last!

A note, please,

for the torturer,

For the teacher-torturer!”

Vlas took

the note

to school, and then

Would not show up

there again.

In a word,

this guy Vlas

Grew up a real lazy-ass!

So small

was the heft

of his knowledge

That he could not go

to college.

He was barely hired,

as a favor,

To work as a

factory laborer.

And even

at the factory

With Vlas it was the same story:

For others –

work thrums!

Skipkin skips

work,

the bum!

In a word, in about

A month

he was fired

and kicked out.

Haunting a pub

in sorrow,

Vlas

Soaks

his mustache

in a bottomless glass.

And under the fence,

like a swine,

He lies

in tatters

and grime.

Children,

do not become

like Vlas!

Grab books

with joy,

and off to class!

Make a textbook your weapon

and take it!

From childhood,

expand your brain

and shake it!

Keep school in mind!

Only those who stay

In school

can be builders

of happy days!