Talking to Vladimir Mayakovsky

All right, I admit it: It was just a dream I had last night. I was trudging along a muddy path in a column of downcast men on the blackened outskirts of New York, the twilight dingy and ruined, the future without hope as we marched along in our soiled, proletarian rags. To my left was Mayakovsky, head shaved, and next to him his friend with gray beard and dark cap. "You've got to admit," Mayakovsky was saying, "that this is a pretty good way to write a poem." "Yes," I said, "the momentum is sustained by our walking forward, the desolate landscape seeps into every word, and you're free to say anything you want." "That's because we're inside the poem," he said, "not outside." Puddles of oily water gleamed dully beneath the low clouds. "That's why my poems were so big: there's more room inside." The hard line of his jaw flexed and the men dispersed. I followed his friend behind a wall to hear the poem go on in the lecture the friend was giving on history, but no, the real poem had finished. I went back to the spot where the poem had finished. Vladimir had left the poem.