Joseph Brodsky
Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, born in 1940, received the Nobel Prize in 1987.
May 24, 1980
I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half teh world, the earthly
width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country that bore and nursed me.
Those who forgot me would make a city.
I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles,
worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter,
planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables,
guzzled everything save dry water.
I’ve admitted the sentries’ third eye into my wet and foul
dreams. Munched the bread of exile: it’s stale and warty.
Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl;
switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.
What should I say about life? That it’s long and abhors transparence.
Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit.
Yet until brown clay has been crammed down my larnyx,
only gratitude will be gushing from it.
(1980, translated by the author)
from brodsky’s twenty sonnets to mary queen of scots:
vi
I loved you. And my love of you (it seems,
it’s only pain) still stabs me through the brain.
The whole thing’s shattered into smithereens.
I tried to shoot myself–using a gun
is not so simple. And the temples: which one,
the right or left? Reflection, not the twitching,
kept me from acting. Jesus, what a mess!
I loved you with such strength, such hopelessness!
May God send you in others–not a chance!
He, capable of many things at once,
won’t–citing parmenides–reinspire
the bloodstream fire, the bone-crushing creeps,
which melt the lead in fillings with desire
to touch–“your hips,” I must delete–your lips.
xiv
Love is more powerful than separation, but
the latter is more lasting. Plus, the greater
the statue, the more palpably it ain’t her.
Her voice, her wits, smell, finally are cut
off. While one blames it on the granite that
you won’t kick up your legs to starry heights, for
your petticoats, one has to punish but
one’s awkward self. It’s not ’cause so much blood
and so much water–eequally blue–
have flowed under the bridge, but since the brass
bed screams at night under a lonely lad,
I’d have erected too, a stone for you,
but I would cut it in transparent glass.
I took a class taught by Brodsky once. The man chain smoked cigarettes and rambled incessantly. But I received a “B for Bearable” for my grade, so I was happy enough.