Song of WelcomeBY JOSEPH BRODSKY

Heres your mom, heres your dad.Welcome to being their flesh and blood.Why do you look so sad?

Heres your food, heres your drink.Also some thoughts, if you care to think.Welcome to everything.

Heres your practically clean slate.Welcome to it, though its kind of late.Welcome at any rate.

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Heres your paycheck, heres your rent.Money is natures fifth element.Welcome to every cent.

Heres your swarm and your huge beehive.Welcome to the place with its roughly fivebillion like you alive.

Welcome to the phone book that stars your name.Digits are democracys secret aim.Welcome to your claim to fame.

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Heres your marriage, and heres divorce.Now thats the order you cant reverse.Welcome to it; up yours,

Heres your blade, heres your wrist.Welcome to playing your own terrorist;call it your Middle East.

Heres your mirror, your dental gleam.Heres an octopus in your dream.Why do you try to scream?

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Heres your corncob, your TV set.Your candidate suffering an upset.Welcome to what he said.

Heres your porch, see the cars pass by.Heres your shitting dogs guilty eye.Welcome to its alibi.

Here are your cicadas, then a chickadee,the bulbs dry tear in your lemon tea.Welcome to infinity.

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Here are your pills on the plastic tray,your disappointing, crisp X-ray.You are welcome to pray.

Heres your cemetery, a well-kept glen.Welcome to a voice that says Amen.The end of the rope, old man.

Heres your will, and heres a fewtakers. Heres an empty pew.Heres life after you.

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And here are your stars which appear still keenon shining as though you had never been.They might have a point, old bean.

Heres your afterlife, with no traceof you, especially of your face.Welcome, and call it space.Welcome to where one cannot breathe.This way, space resembles whats underneath,and Saturn holds the wreath.

Joseph Brodsky, "Song of Welcome" from Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999. Copyright 2000 by Joseph Brodsky. Reprinted by permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc..

Source: Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999 (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000)