JOSEPH BRODSKY
477
scribed in detail: probability can't be terribly particular. Similarly the hawk, bat–
ting its wings like eyelids through "the shades," is moving through the same ab–
sence. The refrain-like "To him this must have been a familiar sight" is all the
more poignant because it cuts both ways: the hawk's flight here is as real as it is
posthumous.
On the whole, the beauty of "Afterwards" is that everything in it is multi–
plied by two.
The next stanza considers, I believe, the summer, and the opening line over–
whelms you with its tactility in "mothy and warm," all the more palpable be–
cause it is isolated by a very bravely shifted caesura. Yet speaking of bravery, it
should be noted that only a very healthy person can ponder the nocturnal black–
ness of the moment of his demise with such equipoise as we find in "If I pass
during some nocturnal blackness ... " Not to mention more cavalier treatment
of the caesura. The only mark of possible alarm here is the "some" before
"nocturnal blackness." On the other hand, "some" is one of those readily avail–
able bricks a poet uses to save his meter.
Be that as it may, the real winner in this stanza is obviously "When the
hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn" - and within the line itself it is, of
course, "furtively." The rest is slightly less animated and certainly less interesting,
since our poet is clearly bent on endearing himself to the public with his ani–
mal-kingdom sympathies. That's quite unnecessary, since, given the subject, the
reader is on his side as it is. Also, if one wanted to be really hard-nosed here, one
could query whether that hedgehog was indeed in harm's way. At this stage,
however, nobody wants to quibble. But the poet himself seems to be aware of
the insufficiency of the material here; so he saddles his hexameter with three ad–
ditional syllables ("One may say") - partly because the awkwardness of speech, he
believes, suggests geniality, partly to stretch the dying man's time - or the time he
is remembered.
It is in the fourth, winter stanza that the poem confronts absence in earnest.
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?
To begin with, being "stilled at last" includes within its euphemistic reach the
author taking leave of the poem, as well as the poem's previous stanza growing
silent. This way the audience, more numerous than "the neighbors," "a gazer,"
or "one," is ushered here into the text and asked to play the role of "Watching
the full-starred heavens that winter sees." This is an extraordinary line; the natural
detail here is positively terrifying and practically prefigures Robert Frost. For
winter indeed sees more "heavens," since in winter trees are naked and the air is
clear. If these heavens are full-starred, it, winter, sees more stars. The line is an
