Selected Poems, 1968–1996

By Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky spent his life advocating for the place of the poet in society. As Derek Walcott said of him, “Joseph was somebody who lived poetry . . . He saw being a poet as being a sacred calling.” The poems in this volume span Brodsky’s career, which was marked by his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1972. Together, they represent the project that, as Brodsky said, the “condition we call exile” presented: “to set the next man—however theoretical he and his needs may be—a bit more free.”

This edition, edited and introduced by Brodsky’s literary executor, Ann Kjellberg, includes poems translated by Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur, and Anthony Hecht, as well as poems written in English or translated by the author himself. Selected Poems, 1968-1996 surveys Brodsky’s tumultuous life and illustrious career and showcases his most notable and poignant work as a poet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9780374600372

Book preview

SIX YEARS LATER

So long had life together been that now

the second of January fell again

on Tuesday, making her astonished brow

lift like a windshield wiper in the rain,

so that her misty sadness cleared, and showed

a cloudless distance waiting up the road.

So long had life together been that once

the snow began to fall, it seemed unending;

that, lest the flakes should make her eyelids wince,

I’d shield them with my hand, and they, pretending

not to believe that cherishing of eyes,

would beat against my palm like butterflies.

So alien had all novelty become

that sleep’s entanglements would put to shame

whatever depths the analysts might plumb;

that when my lips blew out the candle flame,

her lips, fluttering from my shoulder, sought

to join my own, without another thought.

So long had life together been that all

that tattered brood of papered roses went,

and a whole birch grove grew upon the wall,

and we had money, by some accident,

and tonguelike on the sea, for thirty days,

the sunset threatened Turkey with its blaze.

So long had life together been without

books, chairs, utensils—only that ancient bed—

that the triangle, before it came about,

had been a perpendicular, the head

of some acquaintance hovering above

two points which had been coalesced by love.

So long had life together been that she

and I, with our joint shadows, had composed

a double door, a door which, even if we

were lost in work or sleep, was always closed:

somehow its halves were split and we went right

through them into the future, into night.

Translated by Richard Wilbur

I SIT BY THE WINDOW

FOR LEV LOSEFF

I said fate plays a game without a score,

and who needs fish if you’ve got caviar?

The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass

and turn you on—no need for coke, or grass.

I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.

When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn’t often.

I said the forest’s only part of a tree.

Who needs the whole girl if you’ve got her knee?

Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,

the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.

I sit by the window. The dishes are done.

I was happy here. But I won’t be again.

I wrote: The bulb looks at the floor in fear,

and love, as an act, lacks a verb; the zer-

o Euclid thought the vanishing point became

wasn’t math—it was the nothingness of Time.

I sit by the window. And while I sit

my youth comes back. Sometimes I’d smile. Or spit.

I said that the leaf may destroy the bud;

what’s fertile falls in fallow soil—a dud;

that on the flat field, the unshadowed