News at Eleven: On his grave, inscribed with the dates

1940-1996 and his name in Cyrillic letters, were chocolates, pens and flowers. But mostly chocolates. There was not, as is so often the case in Italian cemeteries, a portrait of the deceased set into the stone. I had been longing to see Joseph Brodsky's last face.

In Watermark, his book on Venice, the author writes: 'Inanimate by nature, hotel room mirrors are even further dulled by having seen so many. What they return to you is not your identity but your anonymity.'

from Granta: Brodsky's Room and a Half

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