«Человек, первым открывший Бродского Западу». Беседы с Джорджем Клайном

Did you regain this promised place, revisitThis skeleton, this bare map, of a city?The Admiralty spire sinks through the blizzard[204];The geometric paint on level squaresTurns pale.            Electric power is disconnected,A shade emerges from its icy spectrum;Behind Izmailov Boulevard a specterOf rusty locomotives looms and staresThis streetcar is the same, this threadbare topcoat…

A scrap of paper spins above the asphalt,The nineteenth century’s enormous icefloeBlocks off the station’s stream.            The roaring skySlams shut. The decades fade and lose their features,The clouded cities blow past like bad weather;There is a kind of gift in echoed gestures[205],But no man’s ever born a second time.He draws back to the February morningWhich grips this slow and sluggish northern Rome, andMoves off to test a different horizon,

Whose rhythms reproduce the beat of snow.He’s called to wolf-caves where the tense walls glisten,To mental hospitals, to dirt, to prison,To Petersburg’s bleak, black familiar vision,At which his words were pointed long ago.There’s no rebirth of harmony or measure.But time has kindled, in the world’s wide brazier,A fire of ticking logs; still its own treasure[206]Lies lower, in a timeless hearth, which warmsAnd focuses our fate with clean-edged lenses

That bring to light a web of happy chancesAnd sometimes make our doings strong events, asFinite extensions of eternal forms[207].Reality – not mirrored, interrupted —An island that has rivered, foamed, erupted,To take the place of Paradise Disrupted[208],And batter through the shell of living speech.Against a flood of clouds above the ark’s bowWhite doves describe a giant circle, doubtfulOf their own power to pick out, or to vouch for,Mount Ararat among its neighbor peeks.

Cast off from shore! Set sail! The hour’s upon us.Stones split; the lie runs out. We have among usBut one remaining witness: art alone isA light to break our midnight winterdrift[209].Black ice is overwhelmed by blessed grasses,Dark rivers rub the sea with their wet noses,A meaningless, unweighted, lost word splashes —A word almost as meaningless as death.

Глава 11. Стихи на случай. Джордж Клайн, Иосиф Бродский

И Иосифу Бродскому, и Джорджу Клайну нравилось отмечать дни рождения. Вот письмо, отправленное 23 апреля 1970 года по некоему списку рассылки в связи с днем рождения (24 мая) Бродского, жившего тогда в Ленинграде: