Soviet Milk

Don’t talk like that,’ I heard Jesse say, trying to comfort my daughter. ‘This is the hand that we’ve been dealt. We’re worn out from carrying heavy burdens. Everything has to be accepted with humility, even wire brushes. Then you’ll regain your strength of soul.’

But why did he eat his children?’ I asked my mother.

‘Probably he was saving them from being caged,’ Mother said, and hugged me tightly

Brodsky’s poetry. He said that life was a pendulum which, once swung to the left, had only to swing back again.