Сочинения Иосифа Бродского. Том IV

The last twenty years were good for practically everybody
save the dead. But maybe for them as well.
Maybe the Almighty Himself has turned a bit bourgeois
and uses a credit card. For otherwise time’s passage
makes no sense. Hence memories, recollections,
values, deportment. One hopes one hasn’t
spent one’s mother or father or both, or a handful of friends entirely
as they cease to hound one’s dreams. One’s dreams,
unlike the city, become less populous
the older one gets. That’s why the eternal rest
cancels analysis. The last twenty years were good
for practically everybody and constituted
the afterlife for the dead. Its quality could be questioned
but not its duration. The dead, one assumes, would not
mind attaining a homeless status, and sleep in archways
or watch pregnant submarines returning
to their native pen after a worldwide journey
without destroying life on earth, without
even a proper flag to hoist.

1991

ANTI-SHENANDOAH: TWO SKITS AND A CHORUS

I. Departure

«Why don’t we board a train and go off to Persia?
Persia doesn’t exist, obviously, but inertia
does. It’s a better vehicle than any old engine, Johnny,
and we may have a comfortable, an eventful journey».

«Why do you call me Johnny when you know I am Billy, Mary?

Perhaps because of inertia? It’s Johnny you want to marry,
not me. But he is not in Persia, he went off to Warsaw,
although after 1945 it’s a different city also».

«Of course, you are Billy, Billy; and I’m not Mary, either.

Actually, I am Suzy: you are welcome to check my Visa.
But let’s be Mary and Johnny, like in the Ark of Noah,
or nameless, the way we were when we were spermatozoa».

«Because there are but two sexes, there is a lot of nuance,

and history’s where our exes join kings and ruins.
When someone’s whereabouts become a mystery,
you should take the train of thought that goes to history».

«Ah, there is so much action! In history, willy-nilly,

Mary becomes just Suzy, and Johnny Billy,
B. C. becomes A. D., and Persia Warsaw.
For history breeds inertia, and vice versa».

«Ah, mixing inertia with history bespeaks individuality!

Mary, let’s take a chance, this father of causality:
let’s take the express to where folks live in utter penury
and where the reality quickly becomes a memory».

«Oh, he is my dear boy, my slowly peeled banana!»

«And she is my sweetheart filled with Tampax Americana!»
«The future arrives on time whistling Domine Gloria,
and we must take it eastward, where it’s always earlier».

II. Arrival