Pilgrims of Brodsky

there’s a lazy sunday far from home, so I’ve found an English translation of another Brodsky’s poem. This poem I’ve first heard in the age of twenty, and given the circumstances of epouche, it was an underground song, a manifestation of forbidden culture. For Brodsky in the time of writting, the poem was most probably post-christian. Yet what’s Brodsky: he’s just a magical mirrow that shows our souls rather than faces.  For me of that age, the poem was a kind of pre-christian, that drove me think of things beyond earthy world. Here it goes:

PILGRIMS

Past arenas and temples,

past churches and taverns,

past elegant graveyards,

past thundering markets,

past the world, and past sorrow,

past Rome, and past Mecca –

scorched by the sun’s blueness,

the pilgrims are trekking.

They are hunchbacked, they hobble.

They are hungry, half-noked –

with eyes full of sunset

and hearts full of sunrise.

The wastes sing behind them,

heat-lightning flares feebly,

the stars sweep above them,

birds screech to them hoarsely:

"The world has not altered."

No. It has not altered.

It is what it has been.

It is what it will be.

Its snow-crust still dazzles,

its warmth is still doubtful.

The world will be faithless

and yet everlasting.

Perhaps men can know it

and yet it is endless.

Which means there’s no meaning

in faith in oneself, or

in God; all that’s left is

the Road and the Dreaming.

Yet earth will know sunsets.

And earth will know dawnings.

Dead soldiers will loam it,

live poets affirm it.

 p.s. you have noticed "noked" The second letter must be "a". Yet this blog is hosted by an educational organization, and such words are unacceptable in this blog. Seriously: nothing is more dangerous than automated stupidity. 

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