Iosif Brodsky. A Part of Speech

Contents

• Preface (1980)
• Six Years Later ("So long had life together been that now...") (1969)
• Anno Domini ("The provinces are celebrating Christmas...") (Palanga, 1968)
• Autumn in Norenskaya ("We return from the field. The wind...") (1965)
• "A second Christmas by the shore..." (Yalta, 1971)
• Homage to Yalta ("The story to be told below is truthful...") (1969)
• A Song to No Music ("When you recall me in that land...") (1970)
• The End of a Beautiful Era ("Since the stern art of poetry calls for words, I, morose...") (Leningrad, 1969)
• Lithuanian Divertissement ("A modest little country by the sea...") (1971)
• On Love ("Twice I woke up tonight and wandered to...") (1971)
• I Sit by the Window ("I said fate plays a game without a score...") (1971)
• Nature Morte ("People and things crowd in...") (1971)
• December 24, 1971 ("When it's Christmas we're all of us magi...") (1972)
• To a Tyrant ("He used to come here till he donned gold braid...") (1972)
• The Funeral of Bobò ("Bobò is dead, but don't take off your hat...") (1972)
• Letters to a Roman Friend ("Now it's windy and the waves are running crisscross...") (1972)
• Nunc Dimittis ("When Mary first came to present the Christ Child...") (February 16, 1972)
• Odysseus to Telemachus ("My dear Telemachus...") (1972)
• "An autumn evening in the modest square..." (1972)
• 1972 ("Birds don't fly through my skylight nowadays...") (1972)
• In the Lake District ("In those days, in a place where dentists thrive...") (Ann Arbor, 1973)
• The Butterfly ("Should I say that you're dead?...") (1973)
• Torso ("If suddenly you walk on grass turned stone...") (1973)
• Lagoon ("Down in the lobby three elderly women, bored...") (1973)
• "The classical ballet, let's say, is beauty's keep..." (1976)
• On the Death of Zhukov ("Columns of grandsons, stiff at attention...") (London, 1974)
• Mexican Divertimento ( Cuernavaca"Beneath the tree where M., the Frenchmen's pet...")
• 1867 ("Nocturnal gardens under slowly ripening mangoes...")
• Mérida ("A fan of palms surrounding...")
• Mexican Romancero ("Good old Mexico City...")
• To Evgeny ("I've been in Mexico, clambered up the pyramids...")
• Encyclopedia Entry ("Magnificent and beggar land...") (1975)
• The Thames at Chelsea ("November. The sun, having risen on an empty stomach...") (1974)
• A Part of Speech (1975--76)
• "I was born and grew up in the Baltic marshland..." (1975)
• "The North buckles metal, glass it won't harm..."
• "From nowhere with love the enth of Marchember sir..."
• "A list of some observations. In a corner, it's warm..."
• "I recognize this wind battering the limp grass..." (1975)
• "A navy-blue dawn in a frosted pane..."
• "You've forgotten that village lost in the rows and rows..." (1975)
• "In the little town out of which death sprawled over the classroom map..." (1975)
• "As for the stars, they are always on..." (1975)
• "Near the ocean, by candlelight. Scattered farms..." (1975)
• "The Laocoon of a tree, casting the mountain weight..."
• "If anything's to be praised, it's most likely how..."
• "There is always a possibility left -- to let..."
• "and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice..." (1975)
• "Not that I am losing my grip: I am just tired of summer..." (1975)
• Lullaby of Cape Cod ("The eastern tip of the Empire dives into night...") (1975)
• December in Florence ("The doors take in air, exhale steam; you, however, won't...") (1976)
• In England ( Brighton Rock"And so you are returning, livid flush of early dusk. The chalk...") (1976)
• Plato Elaborated ("I should like, Fortunatus, to live in a city where a riv...") (1977)
• Letters from the Ming Dynasty ("Soon it will be thirteen years since the nightingale...") (1977)
• The Rustle of Acacias ("Summertime, the cities empty. Saturdays, holidays...") (1977)
• Elegy: for Robert Lowell ("In the autumnal blue...") (1977)
• Strophes ("Like a glass whose imprint...") (1978)
• San Pietro ("Three weeks now and the fog still clings to the white...") (Venice, 1978)
• Notes