PETER FILKINS
Elegy for Joseph Brodsky
(1940-1996)
It was winter and a star
inscribed the darkness early,
its light, having traveled far,
become its el egy.
Elsewhere, a samovar
brewed the morning's tea,
its shadow, the vernacular
that traced a cyrillic
13-,
as above, the pulsing star
burned onjust as brightly,
the unappointed avatar
of one's proximi
ty
to Time's unwritten grammar,
whose conjugate, geography,
echoes a throat's own
r
breaking across the sea.
Or even space-that star!–
its ray's autonomy
striking an open calendar
incandescently:
the page gone blank,
t/I/./5
Jar
translated to
what will
ve.
It was winter and a star,
and then infini
ty.
II
The 'wan flat voice' is free,
alive in rivulets of meter
augunng an ocean,
a coastline or hem.isphere,
outdistancing your gaze,
