Сочинения Иосифа Бродского. Том IV

This is the house destroyed by Jack.
This is the spot where the rumpled buck
stops, and where Hans gets killed.
This is the wall that Ivan built.

This is the wall that Ivan built.

Yet trying to quell his sense of guilt,
he built it with modest gray concrete,
and the booby traps look discreet.

Under this wall that (a) bores, (b) scares,

barbed-wire meshes lie flat like skeins
of your granny’s darnings (her chair still rocks!).
But the voltage’s too high for socks.

Beyond this wall throbs a local flag

against whose yellow, red, and black
Compass and Hammer proclaim the true
Masonic dream’s breakthrough.

The border guards patiently in their nest

through binoculars scan the West
and the East; and they like both views
devoid, as it were, of Jews.

Those who are seen here, thought of, felt,

are kept on a leash by the sense of Geld
or by a stronger Marxist urge.
The wall won’t let them merge.

Come to this wall if you hate your place

and face a sample of cosmic space
where no life forms can exist at all
and objects may only fall.

Come to this scornful of peace and war,

petrified version of either/or
meandering through these bleak parts which act
like your mirror, cracked.

Dull is the day here. In the night

searchlights illuminate the blight
making sure that if someone screams,
it’s not due to bad dreams

For dreams here aren’t bad: just wet with blood

of one of your like who’s left his pad
to ramble at will; and in his head
dreams are replaced with lead.

Given that, it’s only time

who has guts enough to commit the crime
of passing this place back and forth on foot:
at pendulums they don’t shoot.

That’s why this site will see many moons

while couples lie in their beds like spoons,
while the rich are wondering what they wish
and single girls eat quiche.

Come to this wall that beats other walls:

Roman, Chinese, whose worn-down, false
molars envy steel fangs that flash,
scrubbed of thy neighbor’s flesh.

A bird may twitter a better song.

But should you consider abortion wrong
or that the quacks ask too high a fee,
come to this wall, and see.

1980

ALLENBY ROAD