Translation from Brodsky

"Letters to a Roman Friend (From Martialis)”
Translated by Michael Efroimsky

Wind and waves are overlaying one another.
Autumn yields metamorphoses everywhere.
Season-caused transfigurations, Postume brother,
Touch me deeper than my lady's new ware.

Lasses comfort you, but not beyond some border:
Say, an elbow or maybe the kneeline.
Blessed is beauty not confined to a body –
No embrace and no faithfulness required.

I am sending you some volumes, Postume brother.
How's Rome? – Friends with steel in their pockets?
How's the Caesar? Still intriguing, I gather...
Still intriguing and banqueting to surfeit.

I am sitting in my yard. My lamp is burning.
No lass or friend or servant is around.
Just the company of insects gently droning...
No Princeps, no subjects, no crowd...

Here's an Asian merchant's grave, a shaft of marble.
He was modest, but persistent in his business.
Perished swiftly of a fever. He had traveled
To this land to get some cargo, not an illness.

Here's a legionnaire's tomb, a rugged ledger.
He had gloriously fought to Rome's avail.
Often could have been killed. Yet died he aged.
Even here, Postume, rules are doomed to fail.

Postume, chicken's not a bird but just a fowl.
Chicken-brained thus are subject to affliction.
If your lot is to be born in an empire,
Move to some remote coastland jurisdiction.

From the tempest you are far, and from the Caesar.
No need to cringe, to rush, to dread the thunders.
All the governors, you say, are bloody stealers.
I prefer the bloody stealers to blood-mongers.

Sweat hetaera, let us quit negotiations.
You are not to stay alone in this sprinkle.
I shall cover you, but charging me sesterces
Is like sparing your roofing of a shingle.

Now you're telling me I'm leaking - where's the puddle?
Have I ever leaked and left a puddle spreading?
Go and find yourself a husband fit to cuddle.
He's the one you can expect to leak on bedding.

We have passed the midway mark, the halfway mile.
By a tavern, once I heard an old slave utter
That a lot of ruins can be seen around.
Words of wisdom, though from a savage gutter...

From a hillside stroll, I brought a spray of blossom.
Here's a jug for it. I pour some water there.
How's Lybia? – or where is it, Postume?
Are we truly still engaged in that warfare?

Postume, our Proconsul has a sister.
Slim in waist, she otherwise is pretty ample.
You have slept with her. She has become a priestess.
Priestess, Postume. And is serving at a temple.

Come to share news and bread and plums and wine.
In the night, as heavens clear, dark and spacious,
I shall set for you a couch in the garden,
And shall tell you what they call the constellations.

Soon your friend, a devotee of composition,
Shall be subject to the ultimate negation.
Search the cache under the cushion. Requisition
All the money. Tender for the inhumation.

City walls shelter a house of ill fame.
Thither, thitherward you ride your raven mare.
Pay the money, for which they entertain.
Let them now mourn me for the same fare.

Shivers running through the verdure of a laurel...
Dust enshrouding the sill of the fenestra...
Open doors... A bed and chairs – all forlorn...
The meridian sun infusing fading vestures...

The thalatta roars behind the hedge of pines.
By the promontory, a windward ship is beating.
On a cloven bench – a script by Plinius Gaius.
From a cypress' crown comes a blackbird's twitting.