An Excerpt by Joseph A. Brodsky

The English Poetic Rendition by Anna A. Polibina-Polansky

A Polar Explorer

All dogs are eaten up. So the diary keeps

Not a single white page. The beads of words

Covers up a picture of his wife. Her cheeks

Keep moles of dates. So the snapshot hurts.

Further follows a picture of his younger sister.

He takes no pity at her, the latitude and the width

Of joy, contain a meaningful answer.

So the rotten black leg quits its aching existence.

The thigh reminds a stockk of a variety ballet's sweet dancer.

1978, England/tr.2020, Moscow

To Urania, the Muse of History
A Lithuanian Nocturne: to Thomas Venzlova
13. It's a midnight there in a leafy province of a hue of a grey macintoche.
The steeple keeps its clouds out of the adjacent patchwork quarter.
Downside the cropfield, hills, colonnades, bricks, and iron rooves, of poverty and of posh.
And a soldier of the state in his boots full of water.
A night oxygen is flooded with wrong waves, with hinderances, prayers and notes.
And a bold Monster gives out approximate figures, anthems, foxtrots.
Bolero and prohibitions for nameless things and accidental codes,
The news of weather, whatever here on the sod.

1973-1983, Israel - New York/tr.2020, Moscow