JOSEPH BRODSKY
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her - so gaily great -
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VlII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
369
This is your bona fide occasional poem in the form of a public address.
In fact, it is an oration; it gives you the feeling that it should be spoken
from a pulpit. The opening line - "In a solitude of the sea" - is ex–
traordinarily spacious, both vocally and visually, suggesting the width of
the sea's horizon and that degree of elemental autonomy which is capa–
ble of perceiving its own solitude.
But if the opening line scans the vast surface, the second line -
"Deep from human vanity" - takes you farther away from the human
