Joseph Brodsky Brise Marine Dear, I ventured out of the house late this evening, merely for a breath of fresh air from the ocean not far away. The sun was smoldering low like a Chinese fan in a gallery and a cloud reared up its huge lid like a Steinway. A quarter century back you craved curry and dates from Senegal, tried your voice for the stage, scratched profiles in a sketch pad, dallied with me- but later alloyed with a chemical engineer and, judging by letters, grew fairly stupid. These days you´ve been seen in churches in the capital and in provinces, at rites for our friends or acquaintances, now continuous; yet I am glad, after all, that the world still promises distances more inconceivable than the one between us. Understand me correctly, though: your body, your warble, your middle name now stir practically nothing. Not that they´ve ceased to burgeon; but to forget one life, a man needs at minimum one more life. And I´ve done that portion. You got lucky as well: where else, save in a snapshot perhaps, will you forever remain free of wrinkles, lithe, caustic, vivid? Having bumped into memory, time learns its impotence. Ebb tide; I smоke in the darkness and inhale rank seaweed.

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