We implored the protection of the Miraculous Virgin,
We accompanied organ music with Latin chants.
Generation after generation we lived against the State
Which would not overcome us either with threat or punishment.
Till a perfect State appeared on the earth.
The state is perfect if it takes away
From every man his name, sex, dress, and manner,
And carries him at dawn, insane with fear,
Where, no one knows, to steppes, deserts,
So that its power is revealed
And, wallowing in their filth,
Hungry, humiliated, men renounce their right.
What did we know of this? Nothing at all.
And later on there were none among us
Who would be able to tell the world about this new knowledge.
The age passes, memory passes. Nobody will find
Letters begging for help, graves without crosses.
JOSEPH BRODSKY
Odysseus to Telemachus
My Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is done. Who won. .. is anybody's guess.
Presumably the Greeks did; only Greeks
could hurl so many corpses out of houses ...
And anyway, the homeward-headed road's
turned out to be too long, as if Poseidon,
while we were wasting time there, stretched the space.
r
don't know where
r
am, what lies ahead.
Some fllthy island, bushes, buildings, stones,
great grunting pigs, a garden overgrown,
some sort of queen, and grass . . . Telemachus,
all islands look alike to one who's traveled
