About a year has passed. I've returned to the place of the battle, <br />to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings <br />from a subtle <br />lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade <br />- wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of state <br />bad blood. <br /> <br />Now the place is abuzz with trading <br />in your ankles's remnants, bronzes <br />of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises, <br />rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason, <br />laundered banners with imprints of the many <br /> who since have risen. <br /> <br />All's overgrown with people. A ruin's a rather stubborn <br />architectural style. And the hearts's distinction <br />from a pitch-black cavern <br />isn't that great; not great enough to fear <br />that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere. <br /> <br />At sunrise, when nobody stares at one's face, I often, <br />set out on foot to a monument cast in molten <br />lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth "commander <br />in chief." But it reads "in grief," or "in brief," <br />or "in going under."<br /><br />Joseph Brodsky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/elegy-4/
