No Matter What Was Around Them

No matter what was around them. And no matter
what the blizzard was drawlingly howling about;
That they were cramped in the shepherd's lodging,
That there was no other place for them in the world.

Firstly, they were together. The second thing,
and the main one, was that there were three of them,
And everything that was cooked up, made, or given
was from now on divided by three at the very least.

The frosty sky above their halt,
with its habit of the great bending down to the small,
sparkled with a star. And it had nowhere
to hide henceforth from the infant's gaze.

The fire blazed, but the log was burning down;
All were asleep. The star differed from the others
more than by its glow, which seemed superfluous,
but by its capacity to mingle the distant with the near.

Literal translation

The poem “No Matter What Was Around Them”, written by Joseph Brodsky on 25 December 1990, was published in his last collection, Landscape with a Flood