Noel
2012
3.1.2013,
7:00, by iPod.
Mò ra
đường,
kiếm cà phe.
“A second
Christmas by the shore”
Joseph
Brodsky
For E.R.
A second
Christmas by the shore
of Pontus,
which remains unfrozen.
The Star of
Kings above the sharp horizon
of harbor
walls. And I can't say for sure
that I can't
live without you. As
this paper
proves, I do exist: I'm living
enough to
gulp my beer, to soil the leaves, and
trample the
grass.
Retreating
south before winter's assault,
I sit in
that cafe from which we two were
exploded
soundlessly into the future
according to
the unrelenting law
that
happiness can't last. My finger tries
your face on
poor man's marble. In the distance,
brocaded
nymphs leap through their jerky dances,
flaunting
their thighs.
Just what,
you gods-if this dilating blot,
glimpsed
through a murky window, symbolizes
your selves
now-were you trying to advise us?
The future
has arrived and it is not
unbearable.
Things fall, the fiddler goes,
the music
ebbs, and deepening creases
spread over
the sea's surface and men's faces.
But no wind
blows.
Someday the
slowly rising breakers but,
alas, not
we, will sweep across this railing,
crest
overhead, crush helpless screams, and roll in
to find the
spot where you drank wine, took cat-
naps, spreading
to the sun your wet
thin
blouse-to batter benches, splinter boardwalks,
and build
for future molluscs
a silted
bed.
1971
Yalta
December
24, 1971
For V.S.
When it's Christmas we're all of us magi.
At the grocers' all slipping and
pushing.
Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one his own king, his own camel.
Nylon bags, carrier bags, paper cones,
caps and neckties all twisted up
sideways.
Reek of vodka and resin and cod,
orange mandarins, cinnamon, apples.
Floods of faces, no sign of a pathway
toward Bethlehem, shut off by blizzard.
And the bearers of moderate gifts
leap on buses and jam all the doorways,
disappear into courtyards that gape,
though they know that there's nothing inside there:
not a beast, not a crib,
nor yet her,
round whose head gleams a nimbus of gold.
Emptiness. But the mere thought of that
brings forth lights as if out of
nowhere.
Herod reigns but the stronger he is,
the more sure, the more certain the wonder.
In the constancy of this relation
is the basic mechanics of Christmas.
That's what they celebrate everywhere,
for its coming push tables together.
No demand for a star for a while,
but a sort of good will touched with grace
can be seen in all men from afar,
and the shepherds have kindled their fires.
Snow is falling: not
smoking but sounding
chimney pots on the roof, every face
like a stain.
Herod drinks. Every wife hides her child.
He who comes is a mystery: features
are not known beforehand, men's hearts may
not be quick to distinguish the
stranger.
But when drafts through
the doorway disperse
the thick mist of the hours of
darkness
and a shape in a shawl stands revealed,
both a newborn and Spirit that's Holy
in your self you discover; you stare
skyward, and it's right there:
a star.
1972
Translated
by Alan Myers with the author
