‘New Stanzas’--Excerpts From 3 Works

Following are excerpts from the work of Joseph Brodsky, a poet who won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday:

From “New Stanzas to Augusta,” an evocation of his life on a state farm near Archangel:

What does it matter that a shadow

of mindlessness

has crossed my eyes, that the

damp

has soaked my beard, that my cap,

askew,

--a crown for this twilight--is reflected

like some boundary beyond which

my soul cannot penetrate?

I do not try to get beyond my visor,

buttons, collar, boots or cuffs.

But my heart pounds suddenly

when I discover

that somewhere I am torn. The

cold

crashes into my chest, jolting my

heart.

From his elegy to American poet Robert Lowell:

Huge autoherds graze

on gray, convoluted, flat

stripes shining with grease

like an updated flag.

From “In England”:

And so you are returning, livid flush of

early dusk. The chalk

Sussex rocks fling seaward the smell

of dry grass and

a long shadow, like some black useless thing. The rippling

sea hurls landward the roar of the incoming surge and

scraps of ultramarine. From the coupling of the splash of

needless water and needless dark

arise, sharply

etched against the sky, spires of

churches, sheer

rock faces, these livid summer dusks,

the color

of landed fish; and I revive.