CAMELOT FANTASIES

Constancy




By  Joseph Brodsky   


Constancy is an evolution of one’s living quarters into

a thought: a continuation of a parallelogram or a rectangle

by means—as Clausewitz would have put it—

of the voice and, ultimately, the gray matter.

Ah, shrunken to the size of a brain-cell parlor

with a lampshade, an armoire in the “Slavic

Glory” fashion, four studded chairs, a sofa,

a bed, a bedside table with

little medicine bottles left there standing like

a kremlin or, better yet, manhattan.

To die, to abandon a family, to go away for good,

to change hemispheres, to let new ovals

be painted into the square—the more

volubly will the gray cell insist

on its actual measurements, demanding

daily sacrifice from the new locale,

from the furniture, from the silhouette in a yellow

dress; in the end—from your very self.

A spider revels in shading especially the fifth corner.

Evolution is not a species’

adjustment to a new environment but one’s memories’

triumph over reality, the ichthyosaurus pining

for the amoeba, the slack vertebrae of a train

thundering in the darkness, past

the mussel shells, tightly shut for the night, with their

spineless, soggy, pearl-shrouding contents.