Sold into Egypt, he was altogether homesick
For Joseph Brodsky
Sold into Egypt, he was altogether homesick:
And more fierce, desperate and stubborn
Than the man in the bible. Dear poet,
I don’t know whether to use the familiar form
Of “you”– a distinction the English language ignores,
Meanly. They have only the same chirpy word for
What is tender and intimate, like an embrace, or
What is as sedate as a firm handshake –
How can I talk about the golden shadows in Krochnaya
Where your school was, or your home on Pestel?
In December, I see the street lamps there still
Spill out light, like honey, over the Fontanka.
And always on the edge of that canal we felt
The presence of a young unhappiness, warm
Tears of elation. It is the innocent river of your early
Leningrad poems, running under the figured ice.
How much heart you needed to learn an alien tongue.
Yet you adjusted to it, tamed it, held it to yourself,
Until a new character entered your nervous system
Penetrating the tissues with his threads like rain.
To speak of home: it’s as if you dragged your own
With you in a suitcase, with clothes trailing out of it.
Or as if a dark wing stretched across the ocean behind you.
You explained all that in your book A Part of Speech.
Translated by Elaine Feinstein
Page(s) 231
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