Strophes

STROPHES

by Joseph Brodsky


I

Like a glass whose imprint
leaves a circular crown
on the tablecloth of the ocean
which can’t be shouted down,
the sun has gone to another
hemisphere where none
but the fish in the water
are ever left alone.


II

In the evening here it’s
warm. The silence is
completed literally, dearest,
by a parrot’s speechlessness.
Into the shrubs of celandine
the moon pours its milk:
far away, in outline,
a body’s inviolable silk.


III

Dearest, what’s the point of
arguing over the past
which, in its own turn, is over.
The needle’s forever lost
in the human haystack,
not be found there.
Feels like hitting a shadow
or – moving your queen on a square.


IV

All that we’ve got together,
what we’ve called our own,
time, regarding as extras,
like the tide on pebble and stone,
grinds down, now with nurture,
now with a chisel’s haste,
to end with a Cycladean sculpture,
with its featureless face.


V

Ah, the smaller the surface,
the more modest the hope
of faithfulness and unselfish
love for this speck or drop.
It may be that a body’s loss,
in general, from view
is the vengeance on farsightedness
the landscape thinks its due.


VI

Only space spots self-interest
in a finger pointing afar,
and light has its swiftness
in an empty atmosphere.
So eyes receive their damage,
from how far one looks.
More than they do from old age
or from reading books.


VII

The impact of darkness’s
harm is identical,
for dark’s implied flatness
borrows from the vertical.
Man is only the author
of the tightly clenched fist;
thus spoke the aviator
vanishing into the mist.


VIII

The bleaker things are, for some reason.
the simpler. No more do you
crave for an intermission
like a fiery youth.
The light on the boards, in the stage wings,
grows dim. You walk out right
into the leaves’ soft clapping,
into the U.S. night.


IX

Life’a freewheeling vendor:
occiput, penis, knee.
And geography blended
with time equals destiny.
Its power is learned of faster
if the stick drives it in.
You bow to the Fatal Sister
who simply loves to spin.


X

My forehead’s withered forget-me-
not twists my dental set.
Like our thirty-third letter
I jib all my life ahead.
You know, dear, all whom anguish
pleads for, those out of reach,
are prey of the laws of language –
periods, commas, speech.


XI

Dearest, there are no unfortunates,
no living and no dead.
All’s just a match of consonants,
on crooked legs, instead.
The swineherd exaggerated,
obviously, his role;
his pearl, however unheeded,
will outlast us all.


XII

True, the more white’s covered
with the scatter of black,
the less the species cares
for its past, for its blank
future. And that they neighbor
just increases the speed
the pen picks up on the paper,
promises little good.



XIII

You won’t receive an answer
if “Where to?” swells your voice,
since all parts of the world are
joined up in the kingdom of ice.
Language possesses a pole, named
“Noth”, where a voice won’t hoist
its flag, where the snow finds holes and
cracks in the Elzevir cast.


XIV

These lines are a doomed endeavor
to save something, to trace,
to turn around. But you never
lie in the same bed twice.
Not even if the chambermaid
forgets to change the sheets’
this isn’t Saturn, you won’t
land from its ring on your feet.


XV

From the drab carousel that
Hesiod sings and chides
you get off not where you got
on, but where night decides.
No matter how hard you’re rubbing
the dark with your pupils, the Lord’s
idea of repetition’s
confined to the jibing words.


XVI

Thus one skewers a morsel
of lamb, rakes the fire up.
I’ve done my best to immortal-
ize what I failed to keep.
You’ve done your best to pardon
all my blunderings.
In general, the satyr’s song
echoes the rustle of wings.


XVII

Dearest, we are even.
We are immunized, so to speak,
with each other, as if for
pox in a time plague.
The object of evil gossip
alone gets a forearm shot
with its consoling chance of
dwindling into a spot.


XVIII

Ah, for the bounty of sybils,
the blackmail of future years,
as for the lash of our middle
names, memory, no one cares.
To them belongs, like bundles
to storks, the sick-sweetness of lies.
But as long as forgiveness
and print endure, we’re alive.


XIX

These things will merge together
in the eyes of the crew
peering from their flying saucer
at the motley scene below.
So whatever their mission
is, I suppose it’s best
we’re apart and their vision
won’t be put to the test.


XX

Well, then, remove the Virgin
from the gold frame; put in
the family snapshot version:
a view of the earth from the moon.
A cousin never came close in
to photograph us two
together, nor did the plainclothesmen.
All had too much to do.


XXI

More out of place than a mammoth
in a symphony den
is the sight of us both smothered
in the present. Good men
of tomorrow will surely wonder
at such a diluted mix:
a dinosaur’s passions rendered
here in the Cyrillic marks.


XXII

These rambling phrases feature
an old man’s twaddle, spew.
At our age, judges issue
stiffer sentences to
criminals, and, by the same token,
to their own fragile bones and teeth.
But the free word has no one
there to get even with.


XXIII

So we switch lights off in order
to knock over a stool.
All talk about the future
is the same old man’s drool.
Better, dearest, to bring
it all to an end, with grace,
helping the darkness along
with the muscles of one’s face.


XXIV

Here our perspective ends. A pity
that it’s so. What extends
is just the winding plenty
of time, of redundant days;
gallops in blinkers of cities,
etc., to the finish in view;
piling up needless words of which
none is about you.


XXV

Down near the ocean,
a summer night. I feel
the heat like a strange hand’s motion
on my skull. Orange peel
stripped from its content withers,
grows hard. And the flies flit
like the priests of Eleusis,
performing their rites over it.


XXVI

I hear the lime tree whisper,
leaning my head on my hand.
This is worse than the whimper
and the famous bang.
This is worse than the word said
to soothe children after a fall,
because after this there follows
nothing at all.


1978


(translated by David McDuff with the author)