belfast tune - joseph brodsky

Belfast Tune
by Joseph Brodsky

Here's a girl from a dangerous town.
     She crops her dark hair short
so that less of her has to frown
     when someone gets hurt.

She folds her memories like a parachute.
     Dropped, she collects the peat
and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot
     here where they eat.

Ah, there's more sky in these parts than, say,
     ground. Hence her voice's pitch,
and her stare stains your retina like a gray
     bulb when you switch

hemispheres, and her knee-length quilt
     skirt's cut to catch the squall.
I dream of her either loved or killed
     because the town's too small.

to m.b. - joseph brodsky

To M.B.
by Joseph Brodsky (tr. George Kline)

When I embraced these shoulders, I beheld
the room as it was now revealed beyond us.
I saw how a straight chair pushed from the wall
had blended with the brilliant glow behind it.
The huge bulb in the lamp was far too strong --
its fierce glare made worn furniture look hollow;
the threadbare cover of the sofa shone
so greenly brown as to seem almost yellow.
The table stood deserted, and the floor
lay gleaming, while the stove seemed dark; a dusty
wood frame held a stiff landscape. The sideboard
appeared to be alone among the living.
A moth, aflutter in the this empty blaze,
shook my fixed stare out of its frozen orbit.
If any ghost had tried to haunt this place,
he must have left, for surely he abhorred it.

postscriptum - joseph brodsky

Postscriptum
by Joseph Brodsky (tr. George Kline)

How sad that my life has not come to mean
for you what your life came to mean for me.
...How many times in vacant lots have I
consigned my copper coin, crowned with the seal
of state, to that webbed universe of wires,
attempting hopelessly to stretch the time
of our connectedness...Alas, unless
a man can manage to eclipse the world,
he's left to twirl a gap-toothed dial in some
phone booth, as one might spin a ouija board,
until a phantom answers, echoing
the last wails of a buzzer in the night.