Nunc Dimittis, Joseph Brodsky

Nunc Dimittis – Joseph Brodsky

When Mary first came to present the Christ Child

to God in his temple, she found – of those few

who fasted and prayed there, departing not from it –

  devout Simeon and the prophetess Anna.

The holy man took the babe up in his arms.

The three of them, lost in the grayness of dawn,

now stood like a small shifting frame that surrounded

  the child in the palpable dark of the temple.

The temple enclosed them in forests of stone.

Its lofty vaults stooped as though trying to cloak

the prophetess Anna, and Simeon, and Mary –

   to hide them from men and to hide them from heaven.

And only a chance ray of light struck the hair

of that sleeping infant, who stirred but as yet

was conscious of nothing and blew drowsy bubbles;

  old Simeon’s arms held him like a stout cradle.

It had been revealed to this upright old man

that he would not die until his eyes had seen

the Son of the Lord. And it thus came to pass. And

  He said: “Now, O Lord, lettest thou thy poor servant,

according to thy holy word, leave in peace,

for mine eyes have witnessed thine offspring:  he is

thy continuation and also the source of

  thy light for idolatrous tribes, and the glory

of Israel as well.”  Then old Simeon paused.

The silence, regaining the temple’s clear space,

oozed from all its corners and almost engulfed them,

   and only his echoing words graced the rafters,

to spin for a moment, with faint rustling sounds,

high over their heads in the tall temple’s vaults,

akin to a bird that can soar, yet that cannot

   return to the earth, even if it should want to.

A strangeness engulfed them.  The silence now seemed

as strange as the words of old Simeon’s speech,

And Mary, confused and bewildered, said nothing –

  so strange had his words been.  He added, while turning

directly to Mary:  “Behold, in this child,

now close to thy breast, is concealed the great fall

of many, the great elevation of others,

   a subject of strife and a source of dissension,

and that very steel which will torture his flesh

shall pierce through thine own soul as well.  And that wound

will show to thee, Mary, as in a new vision

  what lies hidden, deep in the hearts of all people.”

He ended and moved toward the temple’s great door.

Old Anna, bent down with the weight of her years,

and Mary, now stooping, gazed after him, silent.

  He moved and grew smaller, in size and in meaning.

to these two frail women who stood in the gloom.

As though driven on by the force of their looks,

he strode through the cold empty space of the temple

  and moved toward the whitening blur of the doorway.

The stride of his old legs was steady and firm.

When Anna’s voice sounded behind him, he slowed

his step for a moment.  But she was not calling

  to him; she had started to bless God and praise Him.

The door came still closer.  The wind stirred his robe

and fanned at his forehead; the roar of the street,

exploding in life by the door of the temple,

   beat stubbornly into old Simeon’s hearing.

He went forth to die.  It was not the loud din

of streets that he faced when he flung the door wide,

but rather the deaf-and-dumb fields of death’s kingdom.

  He strode through a space that was no longer solid.

The rustle of time ebbed away in his ears.

And Simeon’s soul held the form of the child –

its feathery crown now enveloped in glory –

   aloft, like a torch, pressing back the black shadows,

to light up the path that leads into death’s realm,

where never before until this present hour

had any man managed to lighten his pathway.

   The old man’s torch glowed and the pathway grew wider.

                                                                                                            February 16, 1972