Proletariat,
Unchain your voices' thunder,
forget
universal clemency'softness.
murdered
by a gang of fascists and plunderers,
for the last time
through Moscow
today goes Vorovsky.
How many will go yet...
How many have gone...
How many-to shreds,...
into smithereens...
Some may surrender.
Some lose vim.
Yet we haven't
and won't give in!
Mould your wrath
in a bomb's great ball.
Let voices
today cut like bayonet-lightening;
become a bogy
for capitalists all.
On royal curtains flit,
spectral and frightening.
With a million feet's thunder
answer blatant notes.
Let millions queue,
serpentine,
by the Kremlin.
Let a comrades's death
affirm beyond all doubts
the deathlessness of Communism,
making enemies tremble.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
(Written in connection with the murder in Lausanne on May 10, 1923, of Vatslav Vorovsky, a prominent figure in the Communist Party, then Soviet Ambassador of Italy.)
