The article considers the problem of the semantization of a poetic text in a foreign audience using the example of Joseph Brodsky's poem “Lagoon”. The author comes to the conclusion that along with the linguistic and cultural content, the establishment of the denotative meaning of a word in comparison with an object or action on which a metaphorical transfer is made will allow semantization of this poetic text. Of particular importance is the establishment of a key metaphor for the text, in this case, the metaphor of water, which determines the semantic content of the poem.