Joseph Brodsky was a Russian poet, born in Leningrad, who became the American Poet Laureate in 1991. He lived at 44 Morton Street and his birthday is May 24.

Like Dylan Thomas, Brodsky wrote a birthday poem. His is called May 24, 1980, and was published in Collected Poems in English. In it he describes various hardships and difficulties in his life, none perhaps worse than being exiled from Russia. Even so, he ends saying: 

Only gratitude will be gushing from it (his larynx).

He also said this:

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.