Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

Fell on her life. We saw the angry flush

And torsion of paralysis assail

Her noble cheek. We moved her to Pinedale,

Famed for its sanitarium. There she'd sit

[200] In the glassed sun and watch the fly that lit

Upon her dress and then upon her wrist.

Her mind kept fading in the growing mist.

She still could speak. She paused, then groped, and found

What seemed at first a serviceable sound,

But from adjacent cells impostors took

The place of words she needed, and her look

Spelt imploration as she sought in vain

To reason with the monsters in her brain.

What moment in the gradual decay

[210] Does resurrection choose? What year? What day?

Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?

Are some less lucky, or do all escape?

A syllogism: other men die; but I

Am not another; therefore I'll not die.

Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,

A singing in the ears. In this hive I'm

Locked up. Yet, if prior to life we had

Been able to imagine life, what mad,

Impossible, unutterably weird,

[220] Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared!

So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why

Scorn a hereafter none can verify:

The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks

With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,

The seraph with his six flamingo wings,

And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?

It isn't that we dream too wild a dream:

The trouble is we do not make it seem

Sufficiently unlikely; for the most

[230] We can think up is a domestic ghost.

How ludicrous these efforts to translate

Into one's private tongue a public fate!

Instead of poetry divinely terse,

Disjointed notes, Insomnia's mean verse!

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

Anonymous.

Espied on a pine's bark,

As we were walking home the day she died,

An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed,

Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,

[240] A gum-logged ant.

That Englishman in Nice,

A proud and happy linguist: je nourris

Les pauvres cigales — meaning that he

Fed the poor sea gulls!

Lafontaine was wrong:

Dead is the mandible, alive the song.

And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear

Your steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear.

Sybil, throughout our high-school days I knew

Your loveliness, but fell in love with you

During an outing of the senior class

[250] To New Wye Falls. We luncheoned on damp grass.

Our teacher of geology discussed

The cataract. Its roar and rainbow dust

Made the tame park romantic. I reclined

In April's haze immediately behind

Your slender back and watched your neat small head

Bend to one side. One palm with fingers spread,

Between a star of trillium and a stone,

Pressed on the turf. A little phalange bone

Kept twitching. Then you turned and offered me

[260] A thimbleful of bright metallic tea.

Your profile has not changed. The glistening teeth

Biting the careful lip; the shade beneath

The eye from the long lashes; the peach down

Rimming the cheekbone; the dark silky brown

Of hair brushed up from temple and from nape;

The very naked neck; the Persian shape

Of nose and eyebrow, you have kept it all —

And on still nights we hear the waterfall.

Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,

[270] My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest

My Admirable butterfly! Explain

How could you, in the gloam of Lilac Lane,

Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade

Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?

We have been married forty years. At least

Four thousand times your pillow has been creased

By our two heads. Four hundred thousand times

The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimes

Has marked our common hour. How many more

[280] Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?

I love you when you're standing on the lawn

Peering at something in a tree: «It's gone.

It was so small. It might come back» (all this

Voiced in a whisper softer than a kiss).

I love you when you call me to admire

A jet's pink trail above the sunset fire.

I love you when you're humming as you pack

A suitcase or the farcical car sack

With round-trip zipper. And I love you most

[290] When with a pensive nod you greet her ghost

And hold her first toy on your palm, or look

At a postcard from her, found in a book.

She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend:

Nature chose me so as to wrench and rend

Your heart and mine. At first we'd smile and say:

«All little girls are plump» or «Jim McVey

(The family oculist) will cure that slight

Squint in not time.» And later: «She'll be quite

Pretty, you know»; and trying to assuage

[300] The swelling torment: «That's the awkward age.»

«She should take riding lessons,» you would say

(Your eyes and mine not meeting). «She should play