Сочинения Иосифа Бродского. Том IV

It’s not that the Muse feels like clamming up,
it’s more like high time for the lad’s last nap.
And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best
drives a steamroller across his chest.

And the words won’t rise either like that rod

or like logs to rejoin their old grove’s sweet rot,
and, like eggs in the frying pan, the face
spills its eyes all over the pillowcase.

Are you warm tonight under those six veils

in that basin of yours whose strung bottom wails;
where like fish that gasp at the foreign blue
my raw lip was catching what then meant you?

I would have hare’s ears sewn to my bald head,

in thick woods for your sake I’d gulp drops of lead,
and from black gnarled snags in the oil-smooth pond
I’d bob up to your face as some Tirpitz won’t.

But it’s not on the cards or the waiter’s tray,

and it pains to say where one’s hair turns gray.
There are more blue veins than the blood to swell
their dried web, let alone some remote brain cell.

We are parting for good, little friend, that’s that.

Draw an empty circle on your yellow pad.
This will be me: no insides in thrall.
Stare at it a while, then erase the scrawl.

1980

ELEGY

About a year has passed. I’ve returned to the place of battle,
to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings from a subtle
lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade
— wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of stale bad blood.

Now the place is abuzz with trading in your ankles’ remnants, bronzes

of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises,
rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason,
laundered banners with imprints of the many who since have risen.

All’s overgrown with people. A ruin’s a rather stubborn

architectural style. And the heart’s distinction from a pitch-black cavern
isn’t that great; not great enough to fear
that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.

At sunrise, when nobody stares at one’s face, I often

set out on foot to a monument cast in molten
lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth «Commander
in chief». But it reads «in grief», or «in brief», or «in going under».

1985

ПОДСТРОЧНЫЕ ПЕРЕВОДЫ [16]

«РАБ, ПОЙДИ СЮДА, ПОСЛУЖИ МНЕ!» [17]

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