POEMS
Joseph Brodsky
THE NEW JULES VERNE
To Leo and Nina LoseJf
A perfect line of horizon . Without a blot. A swanky
clipper. Whose Franz Liszt profile keeps stabbing
the waves . Tight cables are creaking. A naked monkey,
with a scream, leaps out of the naturalist's hot cabin.
Dolphins bounce along. As someone remarked somewhere,
only bottles in the bar experience no seasickness.
A squall tears off the punchline of a joke , and the captain's bare
fists in a flurry challenge the mizzen's stiffness.
At times, the piano's tinkling wafts from the lounge: pure, guileless.
The navigator ponders the course, scratching behind his ear.
And the blueness of space straight ahead blends within the spyglass
with the blueness of space withering at the rear.
II
You can tell a passenger from a sailor
by the swishing silk of his underwear,
by the quality of what he eats, and where,
by the repetition of some meaningless question and a
general air of failure .
You can tell a sailor from a lieutenant
by the absence of an epaulette,
by the age that he's at,
by the nerves wrung tight like cables or, say, a pennant.
You can tell a lieutenant from a captain
by the stripes, his hazel eyes' razzmatazz,
