Untitled By Joseph Brodsky

Snow is falling, leaving the whole world out-manned

and out-maneuvered. Now your private detective

agency comes into its own and

you catch up with yourself because your prints are

so recognizably defective.

Not that you’re about to collect a reward

for turning yourself in. A noiseless, nothing-of-note

precinct. With the onset of night, all the light’s

packed into one star-shard

like refugees packed into one boat.

Mind you don’t go blind. And don’t lose sight of

your being on the street,

an illegal alien, a social pariah, an outcast

who, for all your soul-searching, have come up with

sweet

damn all. From your mouth there issues only a

dragon-blast

of hot air. Maybe the time has come for you, another

Nazarene, to offer

up a prayer for all those hot-shot

wise men, from both sides of the planet, schlepping

along with their groaning coffers,

for all those little children in their carry-cots.

[1986]

Translated from the Russian by Paul Muldoon

Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. He died in 1996. “Untitled” is a previously untranslated and unpublished poem.