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Thursday, April 27, 2023

Jackson Browne "Before the Deluge” – Downstream 2021-"After us" (Joseph Brodsky)

 

 

 

And exchanged love's bright and fragile glowFor the glitter and the rougeAnd in a moment they were swept before the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits highLet the buildings keep our children dryLet creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and byWhen the light that's lost within us reaches the sky
 
Some of them were angryAt the way the earth was abusedBy the men who learned how to forge her beauty into powerAnd they struggled to protect her from themOnly to be confusedBy the magnitude of her fury in the final hourAnd when the sand was gone and the time arrivedIn the naked dawn only a few survivedAnd in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so hugeBelieved that they were meant to live after the deluge
 
 

After Us, By Joseph Brodsky

After us, it is certainly not the flood,

and not drought either. In all likelihood, the climate

in the Kingdom of Justice, with its four seasons, will

be temperate, so that a choleric, a melancholic,

a sanguinic, and a phlegmatic could rule by turns

three months each. From the standpoint of an encyclopedia,

that’s plenty. Although, no doubt, caprices

of atmospheric pressure or those of temperature

might confuse a reformer. Still, the god of commerce

only revels in a rising demand for tweeds,

English umbrellas, worsted topcoats. His most dreaded enemies

are darned stockings and patched-up trousers.

It would seem that the rain outside the window

advocated precisely this distinctly frugal

approach to the landscape--more generally to all creation.

But the Constitution doesn’t mention rain.

There’s not a single reference in the Constitution

to barometers or, for that matter, to anyone

who, perched on a stool, holding a ball of yarn,

like some muscular Alcibiades, passes the

night pouring over a fashion magazine’s dog-eared pages

in the anteroom of the Golden Age.

From “So Forth: Poems” by Joseph Brodsky

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