Fortuitous Poem by Joseph Brodsky, II

When a writer resorts to a language
Other than his mother tongue
He does it so either out of necessity , like Conrad
Or burning ambition, like Nabokov,
Or of the sake of greater estrangement, like Beckett.

Belonging to a different league,
In the summer of 1977,
In New York,
After living in this country for five years,
I purchased in a small typewriter shop
On Sixth Avenue a portable “Lettera 22”
And set out to write
(essays, translations, occasionally a poem)
In English for a reason that had very little to do with the above.

My sole purpose then, as it is now
Was to myself in closer proximity
To the man whom I considered
The greatest mind of the twentieth century:
Wystan Hugh Austen.