Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter <br />garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht; <br />a scalp so often scalded with boiling water <br />that the puny brain feels completely cooked. <br />Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden <br />rubble which you now arrive to sift. <br />All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven. <br />Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived. <br />Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron; <br />still, it's gentler than what we've been told or have said ourselves. <br />Stranger! move carefully through our carrion: <br />what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells. <br />Leave our names alone. Don't reconstruct those vowels, <br />consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larks <br />but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours <br />its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks.<br /><br />Joseph Brodsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/letter-to-an-archaeologist/
