Joseph Brodsky's "Törnfallet"

Thought of this poem this morning while reading Mary Wollstonecraft. Not sure why, I guess because she's in Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) and constantly waxing romantic re the landscape. (I've seen a bit of Denmark and Norway, so I can imagine it.)

Not much for end-rhyming myself (I question Brodsky's insistence), but still a pretty picture of a poem.

***


Törnfallet


There is a meadow in Sweden

where I lie smitten,

eyes stained with clouds'

white ins and outs.


And about that meadow

roams my widow

plaiting a clover

wreath for her lover.


I took her in marriage

in a granite parish.

The snow lent her whiteness,

a pine was a witness.


She'd swim in the oval

lake whose opal

mirror, framed by bracken,

felt happy, broken.


And at night the stubborn

sun of her auburn

hair shone from my pillow

at post and pillar.


Now in the distance

I hear her descant.

She sings "Blue Swallow,"

but I can't follow.


The evening shadow

robs the meadow

of width and color.

It's getting colder.


As I lie dying

here, I'm eyeing

stars. Here's Venus;

no one between us.        

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