By Joseph A. Brodsky

The English Poetic Renditions by Anna A. Polibina-Polansky

*** Almost an Elegy

In those days I spent a chilly rain

Downside the Borsa's columns, by their row.

I though it was all granted and I praised

The Lord. To sheer truth, I was yet prone.

I was so bold, just to face up the bad.

And I was happy at the yoke of angels.

Like Jacob, I did wait for steps ahead

Of me. The beauty followed, half-dimantled.

I look in windows; "where" is all up torn.

Signs interrogative, do hide about.

September orchards and the thunderstorms

Get closer - they rustle out loud.

Riped peard do remind the naked males,

There in thick leaves. The pouring rain is dozing

In my thoughts. So the distant kinfolks fail

To please their greedy nephew, all imposing.

My ear lets through, almost notes-and-tunes.

The noise is done, it is blank and undue.

The Fall Season of the Year 1968

*** ("Ty, guitaroobraznaya vesch...")

You are a guitarllike thing with up tangled web

Of strings. A violin 'gainst the wall, unwell

Is its sheen a la Kazimir, clean, broad

And brown. The curtain sings, in deafened nods.

The whistling shade reminds of violet flies

That crawl downside a map, in no disguise...

The dawn reminds the steam of an escadra.

The striped child's shirt reminds strict, loving Madre.

A Turkish circus actor holds a brush,

His hasty hands are at their daily rush.

So we fish out, from big waves, a trout.

The physics will retreat itself, to shouts,

To barking dogs that lurk, all out loud.

The soakened bullets quench saluting stars.

There at the cloth, stand Kremlins of long jars.

July 22, 1978 - tr. July 4, 2020