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eyes, your wet skin,
my lizard. In the evening, mute lightning
flickered in the sky. It was other people's thoughts
burning down safety. One had
to
pack in a hurry and go farther,
east or west, mapping out
an escape route.
PARTISAN REVIEW
Now, another poem, "My Masters."
My masters are not infallible.
They're neither Goethe,
who had a sleepless night
only when distant volcanoes moaned, nor Horace,
who wrote in the language of gods
and al tar boys. My masters
seek my advice. In fleecy
overcoats hurreclJy sli pped on
over their dreams, at dawn, when
the cool wind interrogates the birds,
my masters talk in whispers.
I can hear their broken speech.
I wrote a new poem in Polish, which doesn't yet have a title.
It
is writ–
ten in memory of Jozef Czapski, the Polish painter and writer, an unusual
man. [Reads in Polish.] Another new poem, a kind of double elegy for
Joseph Brodsky and Krzysztof Kieslowski,
t\vo
men of genius and friends of
mine who died in the same year. The poem is cal led "One Morning in
Vicenza"-where we gathered for the second burial of Joseph. [R.eads this
poem and others, the last of which is "Self Portt-ai t":
I
Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewri ter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try
to
understand
the great philosophers-but usually catch just
