When you are no more, unlike the rest,
the latter may think of themselves as blessed
with the place so much safer thanks to the big withdrawal
of what your conscience indeed amassed.
And a fish that prophetically shines with rust
will splash in a pond and repeat your oval.

from Sextet
to Mark Strand

Joseph Brodsky
1976

yet all the while, far above, your mercy hovered faithfully about me.i exhausted myself in depravity, in the pursuit of an unholy curiosity. i deserted you and sank to the bottom-most depths of scepticism and the mockery of devil-worship. my sins were a sacrifice to the devil, and for all of them you chastened me.i defied you even so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls of your church during the celebration of your mysteries.for such a deed i deserved to pluck the fruit of death, and you punished me for it with a heavy lash. but compared with my guilt, the penalty was nothing.how infinite is your mercy, my God! you are my refuge from the terrible dangers amongst which i wandered, head on high, intent upon withdrawing still further from you. i loved my own way, not yours, but it was a truant's freedom that i loved.

from the confessions of st.augustine
III.3
tr. r.s.pine-coffin

the lady of the lake had twenty four arms. twenty three of them held signs for arts only meant to be represented through implicit painless iconography, and the twenty fourth held a rapier of steel fine as the string under soaring kites, cold as the solitude on a rain drenched night
peregrine falcons swooping in an arc wide as the crescent moon, and all your sadness is swept away in dense morning darkness and the unexpectedly invisible scent of frozen orchid pine bark and rust