The Easy Philosopher
1967
Comb-bound: 84 pp.
Published: 1995
Comprising forty-one of Brodsky’s earliest poems, The Easy Philosopher is a book of startlingly direct voices — that of a student, a young writer, a man lost in "fusions of word and world." Oblique symbolism, sexual and emotional tension, and natural imagery percolate to the surface of each page, bringing the author’s provocative psyche into the open, for the reader to penetrate "the darkness behind the eyes."
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Election
A blue light,
Through cool, greying night,
Shimmers like eels,
And the ears burn.
Shadows turn in on themselves.
The eyes are learning to see
Through the silence and wet.
An insurgent current
Upstages the mind,
Unwinds the body's thread.
The ebb flows backward —
Life on the verge.
Far out, a fish flips,
Disappears in a grey-blue pool.
