Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky. Russian Poet, born in Leningrad, today S. Petersburg, on May, 24th 1940. Died in New York, on January 28th 1996. Nobel Prize in1987. He wrote in Russian language and some years later in English. In 1964 was condemned in five years to a field of forced work by the soviet state. Then he went on exile to the US and had become an American citizen in 1977.


TO MY DAUGHTER

Give me another life, and I'll be singing
in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting
there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner,
in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

Yet partly because no century from now on will ever manage
without caffeine or jazz. I'll sustain this damage,
and through my cracks and pores, varnish and dust all over,
observe you, in twenty years, in your full flower.

On the whole, bear in mind that I'll be around. Or rather,
that an inanimate object might be your father,
especially if the objects are older than you, or larger.
So keep an eye on them always, for they no doubt will judge you.

Love those things anyway, encounter or no encounter.
Besides, you may still remember a silhouette, a contour,
while I'll lose even that, along with the other luggage.
Hence, these somewhat wooden lines in our common language.

Joseph Brodsky

So Forth (1984)