BRODSKY'S NIGHT MEMORY

A hair sleeps
on your chest
as you wipe away
an itch of loneliness
in the Gulag's exile
reinventing the silence
without any act of shame
near your unburied soul
in the historical company
of generations here
in mad wintry mornings
suffocating as snowfalls
trickle in a nightmare
below your frozen room
with an unease
of predatory ants
on your chest
you have mirrored
short breaths
wishing for
a one word poem
to explain your exile
for a future malediction
a dread of night memory
until your untimely death.