Vorovsky

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.)