In a previous blogpost I
wrote about my writer's tryst, where I spent time working with my MA
thesis this summer. Of course, no work can be properly done without
the sufficient amount of leisure so in-between work I relaxed with a
book of verses by Joseph Brodsky, well, two actually. These books
were selected translations in Norwegian, beautifully crafted, and I
was of course immediately taken with Brodsky's elegy for W. H. Auden,
particularly because it evokes my beloved city of York, Auden's
birthplace. This poem is a part of a sequence titled In England
and it is taken from Collected Poems in English, a book in the
series Oxford Poets by Carcanet (2001). The poems in this book have
been translated either by Brodsky alone or in cooperation with
others. It is not specified which alternative applies for In
England.
York:
In Memoriam W. H. Auden
The
butterflies of northern England dance above the goosefoot
below
the brick wall of a dead factory. After Wednesday
comes
Thursday, and so on. The sky breathes heat;
the
fields burn. The towns give off a smell of striped
cloth,
long-wrapped and musty; dahlias die of thirst.
And
your voice - "I have known three great poets. Each
one
a prize son of a bitch" - sounds in my ears
with
disturbing clarity. I slow my steps
and
turn to look round. Four years soon
since
you died in an Austrian hotel. Under the crossing sign
not
a soul: tiled roofs, asphalt, limestone,
poplars.
Chester died, too - you know that
only
too well. Like beads on a dusty abacus,
sparrows
sit solemnly on wires. Nothing so much
transforms
a familiar entrance into a crowd of columns
as
love for a man, especially when
he's
dead. The absence of wind compels taut leaves
to
tense their muscles and stir against their will.
The
white butterflies' dance is like a storm-tossed ship.
A
man takes his own blind alley with him wherever he goes
about
the world; and a bent knee, with its obtuse angle,
multiplies
the captive perspective,
like
a wedge of cranes holding their course
for
the south. Like all things moving onward.
The
emptiness, swallowing sunlight - something in common with
the
hawthorn - grows steadily more palpable
in
the outstretched hand's direction, and
the
world merges into a long street where others live.
In
this sense, it is England. England, in this sense,
still
an empire and fully capable - if
you
believe the music gurgling like water -
of
ruling waves. Or any element, for that matter.
Lately,
I've been losing my grip a little: snarl
at
my shopwindow reflection; while my finger
dials
its number, my hand lets the phone fall.
Closing
my eyes, I see an empty boat,
motionless,
far out in the bay.
Coming
out of the phone booth,
I
hear a starling's voice - in its cry alarm.
But
before it flies away the sound
melts
in the air. Whose blue expanse, innocent of objects,
is
much like this life here (where things stand out more in the desert),
for
you're not here. And vacuum gradually
fills
the landscape. Like flecks of foam,
sheep
take their ease on bottle-green waves
of
Yorkshire heather. The corps de ballet of nimble
butterflies,
taking their cue from an unseen bow,
flicker
above a grass-grown ditch, giving the eye
no
point of rest. And the willow herb's vertical stalk
is
no longer than the ancient Roman road,
heading
north, forgotten by all at Rome.
Subtracting
the greater from the lesser - time from man -
you
get words, the remainder, standing out against their
white
background more clearly than the body
ever
manages to while it lives, though it cry "Catch me!" -
thus
the source of love turns into the object of love.
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