It's not that the Muse feels like clamming up, <br />it's more like high time for the lad's last nap. <br />And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best <br />drives a steamroller across his chest. <br /> <br />And the words won't rise either like that rod <br />or like logs to rejoin their old grove's sweet rot, <br />and, like eggs in the frying pan, the face <br />spills its eyes all over the pillowcase. <br /> <br />Are you warm tonight under those six veils <br />in that basin of yours whose strung bottom wails; <br />where like fish that gasp at the foreign blue <br />my raw lip was catching what then was you? <br /> <br />I would have hare's ears sewn to my bald head, <br />in thick woods for your sake I'd gulp drops of lead, <br />and from black gnarled snags in the oil-smooth pond <br />I'd bob up to your face as some Tirpitz won't. <br /> <br />But it's not on the cards or the waiter's tray, <br />and it pains to say where one's hair turns gray. <br />There are more blue veins than the blood to swell <br />their dried web, let alone some remote brain cell. <br /> <br />We are parting for good, my friend, that's that. <br />Draw an empty circle on your yellow pad. <br />This will be me: no insides in thrall. <br />Stare at it a while, then erase the scrawl.<br /><br />Joseph Brodsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/folk-tune/
