When Mary first came to present the Christ Child
to God in His temple, she found-of those few
who fasted and prayed there, departing not from it -          
            devout Simeon and the prophetess Anna.

The holy man took the Babe up in his arms.
The three of them, lost in the grayness of dawn,
now stood like a small shifting frame that surrounded
            the Child in the palpable dark of the temple.

The temple enclosed them in forests of stone.
Its lofty vaults stooped as though trying to cloak
the prophetess Anna, and Simeon, and Mary-
            to hide them from men and to hide them from heaven.

And only a chance ray of light struck the hair
of that sleeping Infant, who stirred but as yet
was conscious of nothing and blew drowsy bubbles;
            old Simeon's arms held him like a stout cradle. 

It had been revealed to this upright old man
that he would not die until his eyes had seen
the Son of the Lord. And it thus came to pass. And
            he said: "Now, O Lord, lettest thou thy poor servant, 

according to thy holy word, leave in peace,
for mine eyes have witnessed thine offspring: he is
thy continuation and also the source of
            thy Light for idolatrous tribes, and the glory 

of Israel as well." Then old Simeon paused.
The silence, regaining the temple's clear space,
oozed from all its corners and almost engulfed them,
            and only his echoing words grazed the rafters, 

to spin for a moment, with faint rustling sounds,
high over their heads in the tall temple's vaults,
akin to a bird that can soar, yet that cannot
            return to the earth, even if it should want to. 

A strangeness engulfed them. The silence now seemed
as strange as the words of old Simeon's speech.
And Mary, confused and bewildered, said nothing-
            so strange had his words been. He added, while turning 

directly to Mary: "Behold, in this Child,
now close to thy breast, is concealed the great fall
of many, the great elevation of others,
            a subject of strife and a source of dissension, 

and that very steel which will torture his flesh
shall pierce through thine own soul as well. And that wound
will show to thee, Mary, as in a new vision
            what lies hidden, deep in the hearts of all people."

He ended and moved toward the temple's great door.
Old Anna, bent down with the weight of her years,
and Mary, now stooping, gazed after him, silent.
            He moved and grew smaller, in size and in meaning, 

to these two frail women who stood in the gloom.
As though driven on by the force of their looks,
he strode through the cold empty space of the temple
            and moved toward the whitening blur of the doorway. 

The stride of his old legs was steady and firm.
When Anna's voice sounded behind him, he slowed
his step for a moment. But she was not calling
            to him; she had started to bless God and praise Him. 

The door came still closer. The wind stirred his robe
and fanned at his forehead; the roar of the street,
exploding in life by the door of the temple,
            beat stubbornly into old Simeon's hearing. 

He went forth to die. It was not the loud din
of streets that he faced when he flung the door wide,
but rather the deaf-and-dumb fields of death's kingdom.
            He strode through a space that was no longer solid. 

The rustle of time ebbed away in his ears.
And Simeon's soul held the form of the Child-
its feathery crown now enveloped in glory-
            aloft, like a torch, pressing back the black shadows,

to light up the path that leads into death's realm,
where never before until this present hour
had any man managed to lighten his pathway.
            The old man's torch glowed and the pathway grew wider. 

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.

1969 / Translated by Richard Wilbur

Autumn in Norenskaya

We return from the field. The wind
clangs buckets upturned,
unbraids the willow fringe,
whistles through boulder piles.
The horses, inflated casks
of ribs trapped between shafts,
snap at the rusted harrows with gnashing profiles.

A gust combs frostbitten sorrel,
bloats kerchiefs and shawls, searches
up the skirts of old hags, scrolls them
tight up as cabbageheads.
Eyes lowered, hacking out phlegm,
the women scissor their way home,
like cutting along a dull hem,
lurch toward their wooden beds.

Between folds flash the thighs of scissors,
wet eyes blur with the vision
of crabbed little imps that dance on
the farm women's pupils as a shower flings
the semblance of faces against a bare
pane. The furrows fan out in braids
under the harrow. The wind breaks
a chain of crows into shrieking links. 

These visions are the final sign
of an inner life that seizes on
any specter to which it feels kin
till the specter scares off for good
at the church bell of a creaking axle,
at the metal rattle of the world as it
lies reversed in a rut of water,
at a starling soaring into cloud.

The sky lowers. The shouldered rake
sees the damp roofs first, staked
out against the ridge of a dark
hill that's just a mound far off.
Three versts still to cover. Rain
lords it over this beaten plain,
and to the crusted boots cling brown
stubborn clods of the native earth.

1965 / Translated by Daniel Weissbort with the author

Joseph Brodsky: A Part Of Speech