The poem was written in 1967 and is dedicated to Tomas Venclova (born 1937), the Lithuanian poet and Russian language scholar. The autograph of the poem is in the Beinecke collection and bears the title “A Postcard from Königsberg”. Lev Losev points out that the letter “K.” in the title also can be deciphered as Kant. Königsberg, renamed Kaliningrad after M. Kalinin, one of Stalin’s spear carriers, was the place where Immanuel Kant lived and taught, and where he was buried.  

Brodsky met T. Venclova for the first time in the summer of 1966 during his first trip to Lithuania. These two became close friends. Brodsky devoted to him two other poems, namely “Lithuanian divertissement” and “Lithuanian nocturne”. According to Venclova “A Postcard from the Town K.” is an unrhymed sonnet, and compares it to common in the poetry of Renaissance and Baroque “epitaphs to Rome”, when the ruins of buildings are juxtaposed to the flowing waters of the Tibre. Thus the paradox is in the fact that the fluid and the treacherous remain, while the steady and the stony perish (see Losev’s commentary, p.524 in edition Иосиф Бродский. Стихотворения и поэмы в 2 томах. СПБ.: 2012. - T.2. ). In this poem by Brodsky the role of Rome is played by Königsberg.

It is also believed that “A Postcard from the Town K.” anticipated the Roman theme in Brodsky’s poetry.

The poem refers to the ruins of the prince-elector’s castle. In 1968, when Brodsky visited Kaliningrad for the second time the ruins of the royal castle were still present. Besides “A Postcard from the Town K.” the subject of Königsberg and Eastern Prussia is featured in the poem “At a Hanseatic Inn called 'Anchor'…” («В ганзейской гостинице «Якорь»») written in May, 1964.