Iosif BRODSKI



August (ultimul poem)



Small towns where the truth won’t be told.
And why would you need it, it’s all the same – yesterday.
Elms rocking by the window, nodding at the landscape,
known only to the train. A humming somewhere, a bee.

Having built himself a career of crossroads, the knight
is standing now at the traffic light; moreover, ahead is the brook.
And the difference between the mirror you look into
And those who don’t remember you is so slim, too.

Locked up in heat, the shutters are in climbing gossip,
or just ivy, so that there is no amiss.
A sun-burnt youth, standing out in the hall
snatches the future from you, clad in his trunks.

That is why the twilight lasts for so long. The evening is cast
in the mould of a railway square and a statue, etcaetera,
whose look which one reads as May you be cursed
is directly proportional to the absent crowd.
 1996

Traducere în engleză  de Marina VRACIU
 

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