By Joseph Brodsky

The English Poetic Translation, by Anna Polibina-Polansky

***

Don't get out of the room; with little things, do tackle.

Why on earth is 'Kent' if you smoke some cheap tobacco?

Everything outside is senseless, especially shrieking bliss.

Get to the WC. It's you whom your room does miss.

Get back to the room, do not call up a taxi.

The corridor and the counting wheel. No life at back seats.

If she comes in alive, and is opening jaws ajar,

Let her out at once, with her garments on, until she gets afar.

Don't leave the room, count yourself, all sore.

The table and stools mean much, but they are, yet, more.

You would have returned late at night but even more wounded.

Prefer to be blind, unfeeling, upset and wooden.

Naked, dance your bossanova without any outfit on.

It smells cabbage and ointment for ski. The written comes at a bond.

You are unknown, unseen, unrecognized, unnoticed.

Words are superfluous. Don't be stupid, celebrate your solstice.

You are a substance pulsing. Outside, it is no France.

Get smarter than others. To outward world, pay not a glance.

Be pale as furniture and wall-paper. Get locked up, by a wardrobe,

From chronos, space, eros, race, virus, within your own borders.

Tr-ed in 2020, in Moscow