Out of Joseph Brodsky

The English Poetic Translations, by Anna Polibina-Polansky

The Speech of the up Spilled Milk (1)
1
So the Christmas brings me the empty pocket.
So the publisher lingers with my novel. It's locked, yet.
So Muslim dates do infect Moscow and mock it.
I can't get up and return to the place
Of my buddy, it's crammed with crying kids.
And my slut is getting rid of her shit.
Everywhere, money is needed, or tons of wits.
I sit, and trembles of spite, my face.
2
Oh the cursed craft of a lyricist. But I'm quiet.
Phone is silent. Ahead is the diet.
I can borrow a sum from my boss. But a riot
Is aroused inside. It's like to borrow from a whore.
I can't loose all my independence.
I'd rather loose innocence. So the soul renders
The story of love, from afar. It's unending.
It's time, I'm alone, I'm in need, I'm bored.
January, 1967/ tr. October, 2020

Palazzo (4)
A dry post-festa night. The flag reminds
A horse. It chaws with lips, the air. Lanes
Are lit with moony rays. The sleeping monster sips
All "la citta". The statues and the puddles, get fewer,
The further they are, so, from "il palazzo".
The facades, well up molded, disappear.
The doors are not ajar.
The walls do keep the midnight silence, on guard and all alone.
Malicious are your own steps
And unprotected, all at once.
The air smells the seafood and the fish. The houses are over.
The moony way is spilling milk, yet, further.
Felucca does transpass the milky road.
And disappears giving one the sign
That you need now, walk backwards.

1970/tr. 2014 (Malta) - 2020 (Moscow)