Ballad of the Little Tugboat

In the life of each of us, there are days similar to one another and fairy-tale dreams, overwhelming at night; routine and adventure; duties and dreams. Dreams end with awakening, but sometimes they are remembered and seemingly transported into reality.... Dreams come true rarely, but how bleak it would be for us without them. This is what "Ballad of the Little Tugboat" is about, first published in 1962 in the Leningrad magazine "Kostyor." For Joseph Brodsky, who was only twenty-two at that time, this publication became the first and for almost a quarter of a century one of very few in his homeland.
It seems that Brodsky sensed the trials awaiting him ahead. The heart of the port tugboat, which seems to forbid itself to dream, belongs to the ocean, and the dream itself comes true beside it — in the port, on the banks of the Neva, outside the window. And eventually, it carries him away, into the distance. The young poet and especially his little hero do not speak of this directly; for them, it seems to be only a guess, the visible features of which were given by the artist Kasia Denisovich.