Текст песни Иосиф Бродский - Одиссей Телемаку

My Telemac,
Trojan War
over. I don't remember who won.
Must have been Greeks: so many dead
only Greeks can throw outside the house ...
Still leading home
the road was too long
like Poseidon while we're there
wasted time, stretched out space.
I don't know where I am
what's in front of me. Some dirty island
bushes, buildings, grunting pigs,
overgrown garden, some kind of queen,
grass and stones ... Dear Telemac,
all the islands are alike,
when you wander for so long, and the brain
already getting lost counting the waves
the eye clogged with the horizon cries
and watery meat obscures the hearing.
I don't remember how the war ended
and how old you are now, I don't remember.

Grow big, my Telemac, grow.
Only the gods know if we will meet again.
You are not the same baby now
before which I held the bulls.
If not for Palamed, we lived together.
But maybe he is right: without me
you are delivered from the passions of Oedipus,
and your dreams, my Telemac, are sinless.

1972