Days and the Transit System Grind Their Teeth
Days and the transit system grind their teeth.
Time oppresses Brodsky. A man in the street
clutches his passport in one hand,
while the other tries not to tremble.
The check-up proceeds. An ice
frosts the official shout.
Time's not on our side,
no getting through to it without
a rabies shot! A blizzard whirls.
Dish out the dirt, or forget about passes.
The voice is brittle
like splitting hair-ends, snapping branches.
A voice cries in the wilderness,
alone, like a solitary finger, upraised in that zone.
Only one way to circumvent
the skewed world: Don't cave in!
Only the prophet's straight talk
and life, in a back-of-beyond time,
where the most this man could expect
was a prison term and God inside him.
Structure
20 lines · 5 stanzas