Birds in Passage
1980
Comb-bound: 48 pp.
Published: 2001
Price: $9.95
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All previously published in prestigious journals, magazines, and anthologies, the twenty-seven pieces in Birds in Passage weave broad images of the Midwestern heartland and Floridian coast with intimate moments from the life of a husband, father, poet, and businessman, to form an immensely satisfying offering of Brodsky's finest early work.
The Expectants
A slow sun backs away from night,
Into a cold September morning,
And day is suffused with souls
Rushing confusedly toward work
To complete circles begun in dreams,
With reality beating them down.
A wife remains in bed with coffee
And a recent magazine. A child,
Incubating in a creation-sac,
Convulses with her nervous pulse.
Soon, the aging weight she carries
Will relax in a fast collapse
Of seething life. Darkness will pass
Into heated, breathing brightness,
And a renaissance will discover them.
Enlightenment will configure her heart
With God's most precious inventions.
When she turns to her child,
A permanent suspension of disbelief
Will recall all lost, loving wishes
Broadcast over seven unseeded years,
To be replaced with hymns to life.
Then, hand in hand, man and wife
Will know their own beginning of time.
