Tháng Chạp ở Florence by Brodsky
December in Florence
"He has not returned to his old
Florence,
even after having died . . ."
-Anna Akhmatova
I
The doors
take in air, exhale steam; you, however, won't
be back to
the shallowed Arno where, like a new kind
of
quadruped, idle couples follow the river bend.
Doors bang,
beasts hit the slabs. Indeed,
the
atmosphere of this city retains a bit
of the dark
forest. It
is a
beautiful city where at certain age
one simply
raises the collar to disengage
from passing
humans and dulls the gaze.
II
Sunk in raw
twilight, the pupil blinks but gulps
the
memory-numbing pills of opaque streetlamps.
Yards off
from where the Signoria looms,
the doorway,
centuries later, suggests the best
cause of
expulsion: one can't exist
by a volcano
and show no fist,
though it
won't unclench when its owner dies.
For death is
always a second Florence in terms of size
and its
architecture of Paradise.
III
Cats check
at noon under benches to see if the shadows are
black, while
the Old Bridge (new after repair) ,
where
Cellini is peering at the hills' blue glare,
buzzes with
heavy trading in bric-a-brac.
Flotsam is
combed by the arching brick.
And the
passing beauty's loose golden lock,
as she
rummages through the hawkers' herd,
flares up
suddenly under the arcade
like an
angelic vestige in the kingdom of the dark-haired.
IV
A man gets
reduced to pen's rustle on paper, to
wedges,
ringlets of letters, and also, due
to the slippery
surface, to commas and. full stops. True,
often, in
some common word, the unwitting pen
strays into
drawing-while tackling an
"M"-some
eyebrows: ink is more honest than
blood. And a
face, with moist words inside
out to dry
what has just been said,
smirks like
the crumpled paper absorbed by shade.
V
Quays resemble
stalled trains. The damp
yellow
palazzi are sunk in the earth waist-down.
A shape in
an overcoat braves the dank
mouth of a
gateway, mounts the decrepit, flat,
worn-out
molars toward their red, inflamed
palate with
its sure-as-fate
number 16.
Voiceless, instilling fright,
a little
bell in the end prompts a rasping "Wait!"
Two old
crones let you in, each looks like the figure 8.
VI
In a dusty
cafe, in the shade of your cap,
eyes pick
out frescoes, nymphs, cupids on their way up.
In a cage,
making up for the sour terza-rima crop,
a seedy
goldfinch juggles his sharp cadenza.
A chance ray
of sunlight splattering the palazzo
and the
sacristy where lies Lorenzo
pierces
thick blinds and titillates the veinous
filthy
marble, tubs of snow-white verbena;
and the
bird's ablaze within his wire Ravenna.
VII
Taking in
air, exhaling steam, the doors
slam shut in
Florence. One or two lives one yearns
for (which
is up to that faith of yours)-
some night
in the first one you learn that love
doesn't move
the stars (or the moon) enough.
For it
divides things in two, in half.
Like the
cash in your dreams. Like your idle fears
of dying. If
love were to shift the gears
of the
southern stars, they'd run to their virgin spheres.
VIII
The stone
nest resounds with a piercing squeal
of brakes.
Intersections scare your skull
like crossed
bones. In the low December sky
the gigantic
egg laid there by Brunelleschi
jerks a tear
from an eye experienced in the blessed
domes. A
traffic policeman briskly
throws his
hand in the air like a letter X.
Loudspeakers
bark about rising tax.
Oh, the
obstinate leaving that "living" masks!
IX
There are
cities one won't see again. The sun
throws its
gold at their frozen windows. But all the same
there is no
entry, no proper sum.
There are
always six bridges spanning the sluggish river.
There are
places where lips touched lips for the first time ever,
or pen
pressed paper with real fervor.
There are
arcades, colonnades, iron idols that blur your lens.
There the
streetcar's multitudes, jostling, dense,
speak in the
tongue of a man who's departed thence.
1976 /
Translated by the author
Note [by
Brodsky]
December in
Florence
The epigraph
is from Akhmatova's poem "Dante."
IV:
"the unwitting pen strays into drawing-while tackling- and 'M'-
some
eyebrows" alludes to the medieval notion that facial features represent
letters in the phrase OMO DEI.
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