A Cloud in Trousers (Облако в штанах, Oblako v shtanakh) is a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1914 and first published in 1915 by Osip Brik.

[1] Originally titled The 13th Apostle (but renamed at the advice of a censor) Mayakovsky's first major poem was written from the vantage point of a spurned lover, depicting the heated subjects of love, revolution, religion and art, taking the poet's stylistic choices to a new extreme, linking irregular lines of declamatory language with surprising rhymes.

Vasily Kamensky described Denisova as "a girl of a rare combination of qualities: good looks, sharp intellect, strong affection for all things new, modern and revolutionary.

"[5] Maria's sister Yekaterina Denisova, who ran a domestic literary salon, invited the three now famous young Futurist poets, Mayakovsky, Burlyuk and Kamensky, to their house.

Indecisive she was anything but; "on the contrary, her later life proved to be the chain of extraordinary events, triggered by most daring, reckless decisions", according to biographer Mikhaylov.

She fought in the Russian Civil War and married the Red Army general Efim Shchadenko whom she divorced in the late 1920s.

Speaking at the Krasnaya Presnya Komsomol Palace in 1930, Mayakovsky remembered: "It started as a letter in 1913/14 and was first called "The Thirteenth Apostle".

In February 1915 at the Strelets'-related party in the Stray Dog artistic basement featured Mayakovsky reciting fragments of it to the audience, Maxim Gorky among the guests.

On 17 March 1917 Mayakovsky published in Novy Satyricon's No.11 issue the full versions of Parts 2 and 3 of the poem (75 lines in all), under the title "Reinstate" (Восстанавливаю).

[7] For the first time the whole uncensored text of the poem was published in early 1918 by the Moscow company Asis (abbreviation of Ассоциация социалистического искусства, The Association of Socialist Art).

In a foreword Mayakovsky wrote: "I consider A Cloud in Pants (the original title, "The Thirteenth Apostle", was banned by censors, but I'd rather not go back to it: got used to this one) a canon of contemporary art.

Parts II and III contain brutal attacks on the contemporary poetry, praises of the Man who "holds the conveyors of the world in the palm of his hand", and prophesizes the revolution and the emergence of the new, freed mankind.

Where the human eye fails in confusion, The hungry hordes loom: Wearing the crown of thorns of revolutions Year 16 brings doom.