“I loved you” by Joseph Brodsky - love poetry

“I loved you” is the sixth sonnet among Joseph Brodsky’s “Twenty Sonnets to Mary Queen of Scotts” and a parody/re-make of Pushkin’s poem by the same name. Full text below.
#lovepoem, #lovepoetry, #brodsky
---
Joseph Brodsky (May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996) was a Russian-American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly advised" to emigrate) from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.
---
Translated by Peter France
I loved you. And my love of you (it seems
it's only pain) still stabs me through the brain.
The whole thing's shattered into smithereens.
I tried to shoot myself - using a gun
is not so simple. And the temples: which one,
the right or left? Reflection, not the twitching,
kept me from acting. Jesus, what a mess!
I loved you with such strength, such hopelessness!
May God send you in others - not a chance!
He, capable of many things at once,
won't - citing Parmenides - reinspire
the bloodstream fire, the bone-crushing creeps,
which melt the lead in fillings with desire
to touch - "your hips," I must delete - your lips.
(1974)
The poem in the original Russian language: • Иосиф Бродский “Я вас ...
------------------------------------------
Music from Storyblocks: bit.ly/2DEq11L
---
This channel is one of “Top 10 Poetry CZcams Channels” by Feedspot:
bit.ly/2Btg2Ps

[@galina.keencat-poetryreadi5898]

If you’d like to read along, turn on the subtitles.