after Joseph Brodsky
1.
Carlos, we both know Fortune loves deception,
that youth is but a flower, and all those things
that seemed such platitudes to your perception
but that today sound almost novel. Kings
likewise need cleverness to redefine
their deaf-mute thrones; the old divine right glamor
wore off sometime in 1789,
shattered to sparkling bits with common hammers.
Strange fairy of an absolutist age,
what do you think of my addressing you
in such plain style? Spare me your royal rage --
I really ought to know my place, it's true.
But cats can look at kings, so here's me trying
to justify all that needs justifying.
2.
These sonnets, for example. I'd be better
off jogging, voting, making money, not
trying to resurrect a form that's deader
than all those sepulchres into whose rot
you deigned to peek, it's said, one autumn day.
Why sonnets, then? Mostly because of Brodsky;
the truest flattery is imita-
tion, after all. I've tried to ape Vysotsky
(another rhyming Russian Jew -- not that
I've any street smarts or can hold a tune)
but I'm too much of an aristocrat
and can't help puffing up, like red balloons,
whatever lines I write with high conceits.
And so I roam Madrid's, not Moscow's, streets.
3.
Sonnets, like flowers, might assume a crown's
shape in a pair of hands more deft than mine.
Such decoration might relax your frown:
since words weigh less than gold, perhaps you'll find
them easier to bear. Did poets ever
dare dedicate their elegies to you,
or did they stick to boisterous odes, fair weather,
triumphal marches more than half untrue?
I think you must have had a healthy sense
of tragedy; your pessimistic humor
rebelled at overweening future tense
and promises of glory coming sooner.
Loud praises echo like the pasquinades
pasted on city walls and colonnades.
4.
Don Juan had little taste for mocking verses
that sprung from someone else's pen. (You might,
to prove how Fortune fates and states reverses,
hold his transparent schemes up to the light.)
Were I your noble bastard brother, we'd
tear off the tapestries, brocades, and silks
from palace windows; the hungry we would feed,
the ragged clothe, put all to right. Your milk-
white profile would such silver coinage grace
that never knew a shortage or inflation.
I'd seek no riches: your contented face,
dear boy, would be reward enough. The nation
would hail me as a paragon of bastards,
and I'd shine brighter than Lepanto's master.
5.
Your heavy-lidded eyes might narrow when
you learn I'm one of Clio's votaries;
you might begin to doubt the words I pen
as evidence of a lifelong disease,
its symptom being chronic disrespect
for diaries and letters writ in cipher.
You'd not be wrong to suddenly suspect
Herodotus and Xenophon as vipers
who pick at locks and dig through private closets.
But history, like death, can't be resisted;
the line is thin, no matter which side draws it,
between momentous and mundane. The twisted
lines on a map of long-forgotten dreams
entice me more than any Caesar's schemes.
6.
When you first married, how did you imagine
the double portraits on the wall would look --
facing each other in domestic fashion,
the painted eyes like open prayer books;
or each enthroned in state, engrossed in thoughts,
the bond of love bounded by jeweled frames
like couplets on a gold ring's inside wrought?
Marie Louise discarded her French name
and wrapped stiff Spanish lace around her shoulders
(which lately had been clothed in softest tulle)
to be your consort. I'm just two years older
than she was then. Are princesses such fools
for thinking that medieval courtly love
might be revived through gifts of perfumed gloves?
7.
In Holland and in England, coffee-houses
spring up like mushrooms as the Turkish vogue
sweeps Christendom, along with banyan blouses
from India and Persia; but the rogues
and gentlemen of Spain alike prefer
hot chocolate. Drinking, did you reflect
on vanquished Aztecs with a conqueror's
detachment? Empire's grandiose neglect
is bittersweet as Doric columns crumble,
the mathematics of Bernini's gardens
unravel, ancient epics turn to humble
myths, and bronze statues sigh like lovers parting.
The price of sugar and the setting sun
transfix you like the barrel of a gun.
8.
I'd happily switch places for a day
with a court jester just to make you laugh.
Vaudevillian charms and raucous cabaret
would be my weapons, and my epitaph
would say I was the king's beloved clown.
I'd entertain ambassadors in motley,
prevaricate wearing a Jesuit's gown,
and jeer at anyone who dared to cross me.
Dear sufferer, we'd parody it all:
my Jewish luck, your Catholic guilt, the lies
of theologians, even mock the fall
of Rome. What point is there in being wise
and politic? Mad Nero's violin
convinced me practicality's a sin.
9.
Macaulay, with his sharp Victorian mind,
bemoaned the childish superstitiousness
that kept your fellow early moderns blind
and sunk in incest like poor Oedipus.
In Vienna, your eidolic marble bust
lies captive in the Kunsthistorisches
and haunts with a disinterested disgust
the cabinet of curiosities.
I didn't think of nineteenth-century
historiographic trends when I first saw
your stony likeness right in front of me.
Neither did I avert my eyes in awe.
Unhurriedly, I said my salutations
and meditated on predestination.
10.
An itch -- or fever -- of seven years' duration
cannot be exorcised by writing verse.
Accept these sonnets and their dedication,
the ministrations of a clumsy nurse
who seeks to prove the maxim "like cures like."
Your Majesty, take pity on a poet --
if not for wit or art, then for the psych-
ological refinement and the stoic
commitment to the form. How to conclude?
A bow? A curtsy? Ave atque vale?
No, better not; these insolent études
are just baroque experiments in folly.
Therefore I think I'll take my leave with this:
a simple rhyme and an imagined kiss.