joseph brodsky is a genius
Brodsky’s dead, of course, but genius lives on.
We are parting for good, my 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.
From Folk Tune translated from the Russian by Brodsky himself.
The poem that first drew me to Brodsky, and that still makes me weep with sadness and rage:
Bosnia Tune
As you pour yourself a scotch,
crush a roach, or check your watch,
as your hand adjusts your tie,
people die.
In the towns with funny names,
hit by bullets, caught in flames,
by and large not knowing why,
people die.
In small places you don’t know
of, yet big for having no
chance to scream or say good-bye,
people die.
People die as you elect
new apostles of neglect,
self-restraint, etc. - whereby
people die.
Too far off to practice love
for thy neighbor/brother Slav,
where your cherubs dread to fly,
people die.
While the statues disagree,
Cain’s version, history
for its fuel tends to buy
those who die.
As you watch the athletes score,
check your latest statement, or
sing your child a lullaby,
people die.
Time, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill
parts the killed from those who kill,
will pronounce the latter tribe
as your tribe.
Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996),
American poet of the Russian-Jewish origin,
Nobel Prize laureate for literature in 1987.