By Joseph A. Brodsky

The English Poetic Translation, by Anna A. Polibina-Polansky

Dedicated to Leo V. Losev

("Ya vsegda tverdil, chto sud'ba - igra...")

I was always affirming, that the life was a game.

The instead of fish, the caviar came.

That the Gothic style eventually winned

As the pleasure avoiding the syringe's twin.

I sit nearby a window, the oak  grows outside.

I loved few though strongly; I grew unkind.

I considered woods to be parts of a log.

Well, the knee is of meaning. I'm a lucky dog.

The Estonian speel is instead of dust.

That the lady is just a part of lust.

I've washed dishes and cups. I've consoled my soul.

I was happy here once, and it won't be so.

I once said that a bulb keeps the fear of ground.

That love isn't enough verbalized as a sound.

That Euclidus had chosen no cone.

That the zero, into any epoch, is sown.

I recall of my youth, smiling-spitting and sunk.

I keep shadows up weighed there, inside my lungs.

No buds, when of leaves. No stems, out of seeds,

When in thinning soil. And the meadows seek

For their onanism blank. So I snatch my knees.

I speak to my shadow, skinny and neat.

So my song was alienated of tunes.

But the quoir for it, is not yet a boon.

I am not so, granted with anyone's legs

Put onto my shoulders. For it, I could beg.

Like a hasty train, over wavy curtains

There whistles the sea, like of heavy burdens.

Over windows dark, wooing is the sea.

I can't get rid of the stigmatic seal.

I'm a marked citizen of a low-quality age.

My best thoughts are the goods out of some dusty cage.

And my practice of struggling the suffocation

Sits in darkness and celebrates the occasion.

And the night outside won't fight my gloom.

I weave up my words at the feeble loom.

1971/ tr. 2020