Letter to an Archaeologist
Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, uttergarbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;a scalp so often scalded with boiling waterthat the puny brain feels completely cooked.
Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, woodenrubble which you now arrive to sift.
All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.
Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived.
Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron;still, it's gentler than what we've been told or have said ourselves.
Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.
Leave our names alone.
Don't reconstruct those vowels,consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larksbut a demented bloodhound whose maw devours its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks.1983, translated by the author.
Joseph Brodsky
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As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won'ttalk As though with the mercury in its sphincter,immobile, by a leaf-coated ponda statue stands white like a blight of winter After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the insand outs of ...
From A School Anthology
1 E LarionovaE Larionova
