Hence all rhymes – A tribute to Joseph Brodsky
Edited by Specimen
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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.
Published May 19, 2026
© FSG, 1996
Few poets lived by language in such a thorough and relentless way as Joseph Brodsky. Almost fanatically, frantically so. Ethically, insofar as ethics itself is mothered by aesthetics. Insofar as “language that is intolerant, and indifferent in a week to a beautiful physique, worships language and forgives anyone by whom it lives” Brodsky is still present, physically and linguistically so, thirty years after he disappeared in the dead of winter, on January 28th 1996, for all those who met him, textually or in person. Talking, standing next to a fridge or walking fast through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Hence, few poets are so alive in other poets’ verse, are addressed so often as if present, because of their presence, in other poets’ poems. On the day of his birth, May 24th, Specimen publishes and translates some of these, conjuring Joseph’s presence through the verse, and the absence, of this most unique family of good poets, good friends, Seamus, Derek, Adam and Mark among them.
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