{"id":53958,"date":"2026-01-10T13:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T03:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=53958"},"modified":"2026-01-11T19:57:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T09:57:45","slug":"conversation-with-a-tax-collector-about-poetry-vladimir-mayakovsky-1926","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=53958","title":{"rendered":"Conversation With A Tax Collector About Poetry : Vladimir Mayakovsky [1926]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dedicated to the Adelaide Festival Corporation Board — Tracey Whiting, Alison Beare<\/strike>, Leesa Chesser, Mary Couros, Brenton Cox, Nicholas Linke, Daniela Ritorto, Donny Walford & Jennifer Fuller — & their auto-destructive work popularly known as ‘Adelaide Writers’ Week 2026′.<\/p>\n

Conversation With A Tax Collector About Poetry<\/strong>
\nVladimir Mayakovsky [1926]<\/p>\n

Citizen tax collector!
\nForgive my bothering you …
\nThank you …
\ndon\u2019t worry …
\nI\u2019ll stand …<\/p>\n

My business
\nis
\nof delicate nature:
\nabout the place
\nof the poet
\nin the workers\u2019 ranks.<\/p>\n

Along with
\nowners
\nof stores and property
\nI\u2019m made subject
\nto taxes and penalties.<\/p>\n

You demand
\nI pay
\nfive hundred for the half year
\nand twenty-five
\nfor failing to send in my returns.<\/p>\n

Now
\nmy work
\nis like
\nany other work.<\/p>\n

Look here\u2014
\nhow much I\u2019ve lost,
\nwhat expenses
\nI have in my production
\nand how much I spend
\non my materials.<\/p>\n

You know,
\nof course,
\nabout \u201crhyme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suppose
\na line
\nends with the word
\n\u201cday,\u201d
\nand then,
\nrepeating the syllables
\nin the third line,
\nwe insert
\nsomething like
\n\u201ctarara-boom-de-ay.\u201d<\/p>\n

In your idiom,
\nrhyme
\nis a bill of exchange
\nto be honored in the third line!\u2014
\nthat\u2019s the rule.<\/p>\n

And so you hunt
\nfor the small change of suffixes and flections
\nin the depleted cashbox
\nof conjugations
\nand declensions.<\/p>\n

You start shoving
\na word
\ninto the line,
\nbut it\u2019s a tight fit\u2014
\nyou press and it breaks.<\/p>\n

Citizen tax collector,
\nhonestly,
\nthe poet
\nspends a fortune on words.<\/p>\n

In our idiom
\nrhyme
\nis a keg.<\/p>\n

A keg of dynamite.
\nThe line
\nis a fuse.<\/p>\n

The line burns to the end
\nand explodes,
\nand the town
\nis blown sky-high
\nin a strophe.<\/p>\n

Where can you find,
\nand at what price,
\nrhymes
\nthat take aim and kill on the spot?<\/p>\n

Suppose
\nonly half a dozen
\nunheard-of rhymes
\nwere left,
\nin, say, Venezuela.<\/p>\n

And so
\nI\u2019m drawn
\nto North and South.
\nI rush around
\nentangled in advances and loans.<\/p>\n

Citizen!
\nConsider my traveling expenses.
\n\u2014Poetry\u2014
\n\u2014all of it!\u2014
\nis a journey to the unknown.<\/p>\n

Poetry
\nis like mining radium.
\nFor every gram
\nyou work a year.<\/p>\n

For the sake of a single word
\nyou waste
\na thousand tons
\nof verbal ore.<\/p>\n

But how
\nincendiary
\nthe burning of these words
\ncompared
\nwith the smoldering
\nof the raw material.<\/p>\n

These words
\nwill move
\nmillions of hearts
\nfor thousands of years.<\/p>\n

Of course,
\nthere are many kinds of poets.
\nSo many of them
\nuse legerdemain!<\/p>\n

And,
\nlike conjurers,
\npull lines from their mouths\u2014
\ntheir own\u2014
\nand other people\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Not to speak
\nof the lyrical castrates?!
\nThey\u2019re only too glad
\nto shove in
\na borrowed line.<\/p>\n

This is
\njust one more case
\nof robbery and embezzlement
\namong the frauds rampant in the country.<\/p>\n

These
\nverses and odes
\nbawled out
\ntoday
\namidst applause,
\nwill go down
\nin history
\nas the overhead expenses
\nof what
\ntwo or three of us
\nhave achieved.<\/p>\n

As the saying goes,
\nyou eat forty pounds
\nof table salt,
\nand smoke
\na hundred cigarettes
\nin order
\nto dredge up
\none precious word
\nfrom artesian
\nhuman depths.<\/p>\n

So at once
\nmy tax
\nshrinks.<\/p>\n

Strike out
\none wheeling zero
\nfrom the balance due!<\/p>\n

For a hundred cigarettes\u2014
\na ruble ninety;
\nfor table salt\u2014
\na ruble sixty.<\/p>\n

Your form
\nhas a mass of questions:
\n\u201cHave you traveled on business
\nor not?\u201d<\/p>\n

But suppose
\nI have
\nridden to death
\na hundred Pegasi
\nin the last
\n15 years?<\/p>\n

And here you have\u2014
\nimagine my feelings!\u2014
\nsomething
\nabout servants
\nand assets.<\/p>\n

But what if I am
\nsimultaneously
\na leader
\nand a servant
\nof the people?<\/p>\n

The working class
\nspeaks
\nthrough my mouth,
\nand we,
\nproletarians,
\nare drivers of the pen.<\/p>\n

As the years go by,
\nyou wear out
\nthe machine of the soul.<\/p>\n

And people say:
\n\u201cA back number,
\nhe\u2019s written out,
\nhe\u2019s through!\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s less and less love,
\nand less and less daring,
\nand time
\nis a battering ram
\nagainst my head.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s amortization,
\nthe deadliest of all;
\namortization
\nof the heart and soul.<\/p>\n

And when
\nthe sun
\nlike a fattened hog
\nrises
\non a future
\nwithout beggars and cripples,
\nI shall
\nalready
\nbe a putrefied corpse
\nunder a fence,
\ntogether
\nwith a dozen
\nof my colleagues.<\/p>\n

Draw up
\nmy
\nposthumous balance!
\nI hereby declare\u2014
\nand I\u2019m telling no lies:<\/p>\n

Among
\ntoday\u2019s
\nswindlers and dealers,
\nI alone
\nshall be sunk
\nin hopeless debt.<\/p>\n

Our duty is
\nto blare
\nlike brass-throated horns
\nin the fogs of bourgeois vulgarity
\nand seething storms.<\/p>\n

A poet
\nis always
\nindebted to the universe,
\npaying,
\nalas,
\ninterest
\nand fines.<\/p>\n

I am
\nindebted
\nto the lights of the Broadway,
\nto you,
\nto the skies of Bagdadi,
\nto the Red Army,
\nto the cherry trees of Japan \u2014
\nto everything
\nabout which
\nI have not yet written.<\/p>\n

But, after all,
\nwho needs
\nall this stuff?
\nIs its aim to rhyme
\nand rage in rhythm?<\/p>\n

No, a poet\u2019s word
\nis your resurrection
\nand your immortality,
\ncitizen and official.<\/p>\n

Centuries hence,
\ntake a line of verse
\nfrom its paper frame
\nand bring back time!<\/p>\n

And this day
\nwith its tax collectors,
\nits aura of miracles
\nand its stench of ink,
\nwill dawn again.<\/p>\n

Convinced dweller in the present day,
\ngo
\nto the N.K.P.S.
\ntake a ticket to immortality
\nand, reckoning
\nthe effect
\nof my verse,
\nstagger my earnings
\nover three hundred years!<\/p>\n

But the poet is strong
\nnot only because,
\nremembering you,
\nthe people of the future
\nwill hiccup.
\nNo!<\/p>\n

Nowadays too
\nthe poet\u2019s rhyme
\nis a caress
\nand a slogan,
\na bayonet
\nand a knout!<\/p>\n

Citizen tax collector,
\nI\u2019ll cross out
\nall the zeros
\nafter the five
\nand pay the rest.<\/p>\n

I demand
\nas my right
\nan inch of ground
\namong
\nthe poorest
\nworkers and peasants.<\/p>\n

And if
\nyou think
\nthat all I have to do
\nis to profit
\nby other people\u2019s words,
\nthen,
\ncomrades,
\nhere\u2019s my pen.<\/p>\n

Take
\na crack at it
\nyourselves!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dedicated to the Adelaide Festival Corporation Board — Tracey Whiting, Alison Beare, Leesa Chesser, Mary Couros, Brenton Cox, Nicholas Linke, Daniela Ritorto, Donny Walford & Jennifer Fuller — & their auto-destructive work popularly known as ‘Adelaide Writers’ Week 2026′. Conversation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,12,29,16,9,893],"tags":[5313,5323,5315,5318,5311,5320,5321,5322,5316,5317,5319,5314,5312],"class_list":["post-53958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natas","category-art","category-broken-windows","category-media","category-state","category-thats-capitalism","tag-adelaide-festival","tag-adelaide-festival-corporation-board","tag-alison-beare","tag-brenton-cox","tag-conversation-with-a-tax-collector-about-poetry","tag-daniela-ritorto","tag-donny-walford","tag-jennifer-fuller","tag-leesa-chesser","tag-mary-couros","tag-nicholas-linke","tag-tracey-whiting","tag-vladimir-mayakovsky"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-e2i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53958"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53966,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53958\/revisions\/53966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}