Joseph Brodsky – Poetry
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1987 was awarded to Joseph Brodsky "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity"
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Joseph Brodsky

Poetry

Seven Strophes

I was but what you’d brush

with your palm, what your leaning

brow would hunch to in evening’s

raven-black hush.

I was but what your gaze

in that dark could distinguish:

a dim shape to begin with,

later – features, a face.

It was you, on my right,

on my left, with your heated

sighs, who molded my helix,

whispering at my side.

It was you by that black

window’s trembling tulle pattern

who laid in my raw cavern

a voice calling you back.

I was practically blind.

You, appearing, then hiding,

gave me my sight and heightened

it. Thus some leave behind

a trace. Thus they make worlds.

Thus, having done so, at random

wastefully they abandon

their work to its whirls.

Thus, prey to speeds

of light, heat, cold, or darkness,

a sphere in space without markers

spins and spins.

“Seven Strophes” from COLLECTED POEMS IN ENGLISH

by Joseph Brodsky.

Copyright © 2000 by the Estate of Joseph Brodsky.

Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

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Poem selected by the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy.