After Mayakovsky
by Denis Johnson
It’s after one. You’re probably alone.
All night the moon rings like a telephone
in an empty booth above our separateness.
Now is the hour one answers. I am home.
Hello, my heart, my God, my President,
my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm
clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm
from darkness’s fat ear. This accident
that was my life will have its witnesses:
now, while the world lies wholly motionless
and sorry in a crapulence of stars,
now is the hour one rises to address
the ages and history and the universe;
I swear you’ll never see my face again.
Denis Johnson (American, born 1949) has written, besides poetry, novels, plays, short stories and non-fiction. He is perhaps best known for his collection of interconnected stories, Jesus' Son, which was made into a film. "After Mayakovsky" is from his poetry collection, The Veil, but I discovered it in the anthology It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup, edited by Jerry Williams.
Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russian, 1893-1930) was a poet and playwright as well as a political activist and propagandist in the Bolshevik Revolution and early Soviet Union. Like many artists and intellectuals, he grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union under Stalin; he committed suicide. (See comments below for the poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky that inspired the one by Denis Johnson.)
by Denis Johnson
It’s after one. You’re probably alone.
All night the moon rings like a telephone
in an empty booth above our separateness.
Now is the hour one answers. I am home.
Hello, my heart, my God, my President,
my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm
clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm
from darkness’s fat ear. This accident
that was my life will have its witnesses:
now, while the world lies wholly motionless
and sorry in a crapulence of stars,
now is the hour one rises to address
the ages and history and the universe;
I swear you’ll never see my face again.
Denis Johnson (American, born 1949) has written, besides poetry, novels, plays, short stories and non-fiction. He is perhaps best known for his collection of interconnected stories, Jesus' Son, which was made into a film. "After Mayakovsky" is from his poetry collection, The Veil, but I discovered it in the anthology It's Not You, It's Me: The Poetry of Breakup, edited by Jerry Williams.
Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russian, 1893-1930) was a poet and playwright as well as a political activist and propagandist in the Bolshevik Revolution and early Soviet Union. Like many artists and intellectuals, he grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union under Stalin; he committed suicide. (See comments below for the poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky that inspired the one by Denis Johnson.)
