A Polar Explorer

Portrait of Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky 1940–1996

All the huskies are eaten. There is no space left in the diary, And the beads of quick words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek. Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin: what's been reached is the highest possible latitude! And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.

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