I'd gnawed like a wolf the bureaucracy down.
I don't have respect to mandates.
Go to any hell and take devil with you
Any fickle paper, but this...
Through the long passage of the coupes and rooms
The polite official goes his way.
Each person gives him a passport, me as well
Give him my scarlet book here.
One passports give smile to the official's face,
The others do not bother him.
With reverence the English passports are taken
With double-decked lion on them.
Eaten up the kind gentleman by the eyes,
Not stopping the bowing to him,
American passports are taken as if
They are gratitude for service.
On Polish one looks as the goat in book.
Polish ones make the eyes very round,
And make feel like dumb elephant here.
Where's it from? And what mean all this
Geographical news from Europe?
And not turning head to the person which gives,
And not feeling anything special
The Swedish and Danish passports go here
Without any interfering.
And suddenly the mouth of worker has been
Curved out as if it was burnt.
This is the turn for my scarlet book to
Be in his hands all along.
He takes it like bomb, like the dangerous snake.
Like the razor, that is both sides sharpened.
He takes it like rattlesnake both points sharp
With twenty stings everywhere here.
The eye of the carrier blinked with the sense,
But he will carry your stuff anyway.
The gendarme looks on detective with question,
Detective looks back on gendarme.
With such a great pleasure I would be slashed down
And crucified by all gendarmes.
For reason that I am carrying around
My sickled and hammered passport.
I'd gnawed like a wolf the bureaucracy down,
I don't have respect to mandates.
Go to any hell and take devil with you
Any fickle paper, but this...
I am taking from the my very wide pants
As the copy of priceless payload.
Read it, envy me, as here I am
The citizen of the Soviet Union!
http://www.stihi-rus.ru/1/Mayakovskiy/47.htm
