"Zimnim vecheron v Yalte" ("Sukhoe levantinskoe litso...")

The Ending of a Gorgeous Epoch ("Vtoroe Rozhdestvo na beregu...")

Poetry by Joseph A. Brodsky

The English Poetic Renditions, by Anna Polibina-Polansky

* * * To E.R.

The second winter at the Pont Euxinskiy

Where drizzling struggles for its rights, for six months.

...The second Christmas at the Black Sea shore.

The Star of Tsars is over the hedges.

I can't say, I can do with you no more.

I do without you, by new things, snatched!

I swallow the beer, I do exist.

I tread the grass; what I view, I enlist.

Our coffee  house was left there in the past.

All temporarily, we were of bliss, so.

The wintry season here, is half-existing.

The marble stones and the distant masts

Remind me, all of you.

The nymphs so jump about

With thighs all nude.

I sit at my black stout...

The brown stain afar,

Does symbolize the Deities.

We all are seen, from stars.

The future proves, all bearable, of safety.

So drops the curtain.

The violin is uncertain.

The music doesn't last because of dust.

So wavy are the faces and the sea.

There is no wind, not just a single gust.

The future will be faster, to be seen.

The foamy ridges once will turn, too high.

They'll reach the borders where you sipped your wine.

There you sleeped in the orchard, dried your blouse.

You stood at tables, and to conches coming,

You did prepare the bottom of our house.

The waves are humming.

1971/tr. 2020

* * * One Wintry Evening  at Yalta

Levantian, mid-Oriental faces.

The beard at sides, the digged and darkened skill.

His hand swift, for a cigarette, is chasing.

His wedding ring is tarnished, cheap and thin.

But so it dazzles, half-reflecting, bulbs.

I cannot bear it, and then, I wink, so.

My nose is, of a sudden, getting wrinkled.

He swallows the fume, yet, looking down,

And says: "I'm sorry", tuning for my wave.

And I am sitting like in semi-rave.

Oh January, the Crimean pines.

With cypresses and palms, the snow is toying.

The dinosaurus of a steam-ship shines.

Disgusting wines,

At glasses, things are tolling.

So laural leaves at twilight, briefly smile.

The barman wags lezginka, of no goal.

Like dolphins do, move trouts in swift shoals...

Aloe, cactuses and thuyas bloom in piles.

The flakes move further. Oh the blessful instant,

Unique and gorgeous, graceful and insistant!

Tr.2020