Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos lyrics

CANTO 1 I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark gla** Hang all the furniture above the gra**, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land! Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque, A dull dark white against the day's pale white And abstract larches in the neutral light. And then the gradual and dual blue As night unites the viewer and the view, And in the morning, diamonds of frost Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed From left to right the blank page of the road? Reading from left to right in winter's code: A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat: Dot, arrow pointing back...A pheasant's feet! Torquated beauty, sublimated grouse, Finding your China right behind my house. Was he in Sherlock Holmes, the fellow whose Tracks pointed back when he reversed his shoes? All colors made me happy: even gray. My eyes were such that literally they Took photographs. Whenever I'd permit, Or, with a silent shiver, order it, Whatever in my field of vision dwelt-- An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte Stilettos of a frozen stillicide-- Was printed on my eyelids' nether side Where it would tarry for an hour or two, And while this lasted all I had to do Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves, Or indoor scene, or trophies of the eaves. I cannot understand why from the lake I could make out our front porch when I'd take Lake Road to school, whilst now, although no tree Has intervened, I look but fail to see Even the roof. Maybe some quirk in space Has caused a fold or furrow to displace The fragile vista, the frame house between Goldworth and Wordsmith on its square of green. I had a favorite young shagbark there With ample dark jade leaves and a black, spare Vermiculated trunk. The setting sun Bronzed the black bark, around which, like undone Garlands, the shadows of the foliage fell. It is now stout and rough; it has done well. White bu*terflies turn lavender as they Pa** through its shade where gently seems to sway The phantom of my little daughter's swing. The house itself is much the same. One wing We've had revamped. There's a solarium. There's A picture window flanked with fancy chairs. TV's huge paperclip now shines instead Of the stiff vane so often visited By the naive, the gauzy mockingbird Retelling all the programs that she had heard; Switching from chippo-chippo to a clear To-wee, to-wee; then rasping out: come here, Come here, come herrr'; flitting her tail aloft, Or gracefully indulging in a soft Upward hop-flop, and instantly (to-wee) Returning to her perch--the new TV. I was an infant when my parents died. They both were ornithologists. I've tried So often to evoke them that today I have a thousand parents. Sadly they Dissolve in their own virtues and recede, But certain words, chance words I hear or read, Such as "bad heart" always to him refer, And "cancer of the pancreas" to her. A preterist: one who collects cold nests. Here was my bedroom, now reserved for guests. Here, tucked away by the Canadian maid, I listened to the buzz downstairs and prayed For everybody to be always well, Uncles and aunts, the maid, her niece Adele, Who'd seen the Pope, people in books, and God. I was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud, A poet and a painter with a taste For realistic objects interlaced With grotesque growths and images of doom. She lived to hear the next babe cry. Her room We've kept intact. Its trivia create A still life in her style: the paperweight Of convex gla** enclosing a lagoon, The verse open at the Index (Moon, Moonrise, Moor, Moral), the forlorn guitar The human skull; and from the local Star A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4 On Chapman's Homer, thumbtacked to the door My God they died young. Theolatry I found Degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs a God; but was I free? How fully I felt nature glued to me And how my childish palate loved the taste Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste My picture book was at an early age The painted parchment papering our cage: Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun; Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon The iridule--when beautiful and strange, In a bright sky above a mountain range One opal cloudlet in an oval form Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm Which in a distant valley has been staged-- For we are most artistically caged. And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall. Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill. That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear. A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead. The regular vulgarian, I daresay, Is happier: He sees the Milky Way Only when making water. Then as now I walked at my own risk: whipped by the bough, Tripped by the stump. Asthmatic, lame and fat, I never bounced a ball or swung a bat. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By feigned remoteness in the windowpane. I had a brain, five senses (one unique), But otherwise I was a cloutish freak. In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps But really envied nothing--save perhaps The miracle of a lemniscate left Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft Bicycle tires. A thread of subtle pain, Tugged at by playful d**h, released again, But always present, ran through me. One day, When I'd just turned eleven, as I lay Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy-- A tin wheelbarrow and pushed by a tin boy-- Bypa** chair legs and stray beneath the bed, There was a sudden sunburst in my head. And then black night. That blackness was sublime. I felt distributed through space and time: One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand Under the pebbles of a panting strand, One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain, In caves, my blood, and the stars, my brain. There were dull throbs in my Tria**ic; green Optical spots in Upper Pleistocene, An icy shiver down my Age of Stone, And all tomorrows in my funny bone. During one winter every afternoon I'd into that momentary swoon. And then it ceased. Its memory grew dim. My health improved. I even learned to swim. But like some little lad forced by a wench With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench, I was corrupted, terrified, allured, And though old Doctor Colt pronounced me cured Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains, The wonder lingers and the shame remains. CANTO TWO There was a time in my demented youth When somehow I suspected that the truth About survival after d**h was known To every human being: I alone Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy Of books and people hid the truth from me. There was the day when I began to doubt Man's sanity: How could he live without Knowing for sure what dawn, what d**h, what doom Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb? And finally there was the sleepless night When I decided to explore and fight The foul, the inadmissible abyss, Devoting all my twisted life to this One task. Today I'm sixty-one. Waxwings Are berry-pecking. A cicada sings. The little scissors I am holding are A dazzling synthesis of sun and star. I stand before the window and I pare My fingernails and vaguely am aware Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb, Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum College astronomer Starover Blue; The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew; The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt; And little pinky clinging to her skirt. And I make mouths as I snip off the thin Strips of what Aunt Maud used to call "scarf skin." Maud Shade was eighty when a sudden hush Fell on her life. We saw the angry flush And torsion of paralysis a**ail Her noble cheek. We moved her to Pinedale, Famed for its sanitarium. There she'd sit In the gla**ed 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 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 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 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, 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 cla** To New Wye Falls. We luncheoned on damp gra**. 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 A thimbleful of bright metallic tea. Your profile has not changed. The glistening teeth Biting the careful lip; the shade beneath The eyes 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 beck; 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, My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest My Admirable bu*terfly! 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 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 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 no time." And later: "She'll be quite Pretty, you know"; and trying to a**uage 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 Tennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit She may not be a beauty, but she's cute." It was no use, no use. The prizes won In French and history, no doubt, were fun; At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt, And one shy little guest might be left out; But let's be fair: while children of her age Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime, My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time, A bent charwoman with a slop pail and broom, And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room. Another winter was scraped-scropped away. The Toothwart White haunted our woods in May. Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned. Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned Into a wood duck. And again your voice: "But this is prejudice You should rejoice That she is innocent. Why overstress The physical? She wants to look a mess. Virgins have written some resplendent books. Lovemaking is not everything. Good looks, Are not that indispensable!" And still Old Pan would call from every painted hill, And still the demons of our pity spoke: No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke; The telephone that rang before a ball Every two minutes in Sorosa Hall For her would never ring; and, with a great Screeching of tires on gravel, to the gate Out of lacquered night, a white-scarfed beau Would never come for her; she'd never go, A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance. We sent her, though, to a chateau in France. And she returned in tears, with new defeats, New miseries. On days when all the streets Of College Town led to the game, she'd sit On the library steps, and read or knit; Mostly alone she'd be, or with that nice Frail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice, With a Korean boy who took my course. She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force Of character--as when she spent three nights Investigating certain sounds and lights In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top Spider, redips. And"powder" was "red wop." She called you a didactic katydid. She hardly ever smiled, and when she did, It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize Ferociously our projects, and with eyes Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head With psoriatic fingernails, and moan, Murmuring dreadful words in monotone. She was my darling: difficult, morose-- But still my darling. You remember those Almost unruffled evenings when we played Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which made Her almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled, The lights were merciful, the shadows mild. Sometimes I'd help her with a Latin text, Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, next To my fluorescent lair, and you would be In your own study, twice removed from me, And I would hear both voices now and then: "Mother, what's grimpen?" "What is what?" "Grim pen." Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again: "Mother, what's chtonic?" That, too, you'd explain, Appending: "Would you like a tangerine?" "No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?" You'd hesitate. And lustily I'd roar The answer from my desk through the closed door. It does not matter what it was she read (some phony modern poem that was said In English Lit to be a document "Engazhay and compelling"--what this meant Nobody cared); the point is that the three Chambers, then bound by you and her and me, Now form a tryptich or a three-act play In which portrayed events forever stay. I think she always nursed a small mad hope. I'd finished recently my book on Pope. Jane Dean, my typist, offered her one day To meet Pete Dean, a cousin. Jane's fiance Would then take all of them in his new car A score of miles to a Hawaiian bar. The boy was picked up at a quarter past Eight in New Wye. Sleet glazed the roads. At last They found the place--when suddenly Pete Dean Clutching his brow exclaimed that he had clean Forgotten an appointment with a chum Who'd land in jail if he, Pete, did not come, Et cetera. She said she understood. After he'd gone the three young people stood Before the azure entrance for awhile. Puddles were neon-barred; and with a smile She said she'd be de trop, she'd much prefer Just going home. Her friends escorted her To the bus stop and left; but she, instead Of riding home, got off at Lochanhead. You scrutinized your wrist: "It's eight fifteen. [And here time forked.] I'll turn it on." The screen In its blank broth evolved a lifelike blur, And music welled. [line break] He took one look at her, And shot a d**h ray at well-meaning Jane. A male hand traced from Florida to Maine The curving arrows of Aeolian wars. You said that later a quartet of bores, Two writers and two critics, would debate The Cause of Poetry on Channel 8 A nymph came pirouetting, under white Rotating petals, in a vernal rite To kneel before an altar in a wood Where various articles of toilet stood. I went upstairs and read a galley proof, And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof. "See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing" Has unmistakably the vulgar ring Of its preposterous age. Then came your call, My tender mockingbird, up from the hall. I was in time to overhear brief fame And have a cup of tea with you: my name Was mentioned twice, as usual just behind (one oozy footstep) Frost. "Sure you don't mind? I'll catch the Exton plane, because you know If I don't come by midnight with the dough--" And then there was a kind of travelog: A host narrator took us through the fog Of a March night, where headlights from afar Approached and grew like a dilating star, To the green, indigo, and tawny sea Which we had visited in thirty-three, Nine months before her birth. Now it was all Pepper-and-salt, and hardly could recall That first long ramble, the relentless light, The flocks of sails (one blue among the white Clashed queerly with the sea, and two were red), The man in the old blazer, crumbing bread, The crowding gulls insufferably loud, And one dark pigeon waddling in the crowd. "Was that the phone?" You listened at the door. Nothing. Picked up the program from the floor. More headlights in the fog. There was no sense In window-rubbing; only some white fence And the reflector poles pa**ed by unmasked. "Are we quite sure she's acting right?" you asked. "It's technically a blind date, of course. Well, shall we try the preview of Remorse?" And we allowed, in all tranquility, The famous film to spread its charmed marquee; The famous face flowed in, fair and inane; The parted lips, the swimming eyes, the grain Of beauty on the cheek, odd gallicism, And the soft form dissolving in the prism Of corporate desire. "I think," she said, "I'll get off here." "It's only Lochanhead." "Yes, that's okay." Gripping the stang, she peered At ghostly trees. Bus stopped. Bus disappeared. Thunder above the Jungle. "No, not that!" Pat Pink, our guest (antiatomic chat). Eleven struck. You sighed. "Well, I'm afraid There's nothing else of interest." You played Network roulette: the dial turned and trk'ed. Commercials were beheaded. Faces flicked. An open mouth in midsong was struck out. An imbecile with sideburns was about To use his gun, but you were much too quick. A jovial Negro raised his trumpet. Trk. Your ruby ring made life and laid the law. Oh, switch it off! And as life snapped we saw A pinhead light dwindle and die in black Infinity. Out of his lakeside shack A watchman, Father Time, all gray and bent, Emerged with his uneasy dog and went Along the reedy bank. He came too late. You gently yawned and stacked away your plate. We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw Twigs at the windowpane. Phone ringing? No. I helped you with the dishes. The tall clock Kept on demolishing young root, old rock. "Midnight," you said. What's midnight to the young? And suddenly a festive blaze was flung Across five cedars, snowpatches showed, And a patrol car on our bumpy road Came to a crunching stop. Retake, retake! People have thought she tried to cross the lake At Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed From Exe to Wye on days of special frost. Others supposed she might have lost her way By turning left from Bridgeroad; and some say She took her poor young life. I know. You know. It was a night of thaw, a night of blow, With great excitement in the air. Black spring Stood just around the corner, shivering In the wet starlight and on the wet ground. The lake lay in the mist, its ice half drowned. A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank. CANTO THREE L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais: The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay Institute (I) of Preparation (P) For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we Called it--big if!--engaged me for one term To speak on d**h ("to lecture on the Worm," Wrote President McAber). You and I, And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye To Yewshade, in another, higher state. I love great mountains. From the iron gate Of the ramshackle house we rented there One saw a snowy form, so far, so fair, That one could only fetch a sigh, as if It might a**ist a**imilation. Iph Was a larvorium and a violet: A grave in Reason's early spring. And yet It missed the gist of the whole thing; it missed What mostly interests the preterist; For we die every day; oblivion thrives Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives, And our best yesterdays are now foul piles Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files. I'm ready to become a floweret. Or a fat fly, but never, to forget. And I'll turn down eternity unless The melancholy and the tenderness Of mortal life; the pa**ion and the pain; The claret taillight of that dwindling plane Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay On running out of cigarettes; the way You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime Snails leaves on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme, This index card, this slender rubber band Which always form, when dropped, an ampersand, Are found in Heaven by the newlydead Stored in its strongholds through the years. Instead The Institute a**umed it might be wise Not to expect too much of paradise: What if there's nobody to say hullo To the newcomer, no reception, no Indoctrination? What if you are tossed Into a boundless world, your bearings lost, Your spirit stripped and utterly alone, Your task unfinished, your despair unknown, Your body just beginning to putresce, A non-undressable in morning dress, Your widow lying prone on a firm bed, Herself a blur in your dissolving head! While snubbing gods, including the big G, Iph borrowed some peripheral debris From mystic visions; and it offered tips (The amber spectacles for life's eclipse)-- How not to panic when you're made a ghost: Sidle and slide, choose a smooth surd, and coast, Meet solid bodies and glissade right through, Or let a person circulate through you. How to locate in blackness, with a gasp, Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp. How to keep sane in spiral types of space. Precautions to be taken in the case Of freak reincarnation: what to do On suddenly discovering that you Are now a young and vulnerable toad Plump in the middle of a busy road, Or a bear cub beneath a burning pine, Or a book mite in a revived divine. Time means succession, and succession, change: Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange Schedules of sentiment. We give advice To widower. He has been married twice: He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both Jealous of one another. Time means growth, And growth means nothing in Elysian life. Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond, But with a touch of tawny in the shade, Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade The other sits and raises a moist gaze Toward the blue impenetrable haze. How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy Know of the head-on crash which on a wild March night k**ed both the mother and the child? And she, the second love, with instep bare In ballerina black, why does she wear The earrings from the other's j**el case? And why does she avert her fierce young face? For as we know from dreams it is so hard To speak to our dear dead! They disregard Our apprehension, queaziness and shame-- The awful sense that they're not quite the same. And our school chum k**ed in a distant war Is not surprised to see us at his door, And in a blend of jauntiness and gloom Points at the puddles in his basement room. But who can teach the thoughts we should roll-call When morning finds us marching to the wall Under the stage direction of some goon Political, some uniformed baboon? We'll think of matters only known to us-- Empires of rhyme, Indies of calculus; Listen to the distant co*ks crow, and discern Upon the rough gray wall a rare wall fern; And while our royal hands are being tied, Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride The dedicated imbeciles, and spit Into their eyes just for the fun of it. Nor can one help the exile, the old man Dying in a motel, with the loud fan Revolving in the torrid prairie night And, from the outside, bits of colored light Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past Offering gems; and d**h is coming fast. He suffocates and conjures in two tongues The nebulae dilating in his lungs. A wrench, a rift--that's all one can foresee. Maybe one finds le grand neant; maybe Again one spirals from the tuber's eye. As you remarked the last time we went by The Institute: "I really could not tell The difference between this place and Hell." We heard cremationists guffaw and snort At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort As detrimental to the birth of wraiths. We all avoided criticizing faiths. The great Starover Blue reviewed the role Planets had played as landfalls of the soul. The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese Discanted on the etiquette at teas With ancestors, and how far up to go. I tore apart the fantasies of Poe, And dealt with childhood memories of strange Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range. Among our auditors were a young priest And an old Communist. Iph could at least Compete with churches and the party line. In later years it started to decline: Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in Pale jellies and a floating mandolin. Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept All is allowed, into some cla**es crept; And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb, A school of Freudians headed for the tomb. That tasteless venture helped me in a way. I learnt what to ignore in my survey Of d**h's abyss. And when we lost our child I knew there would be nothing: no self-styled Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood To rap out her pet name; no phantom would Rise gracefully to welcome you and me In the dark garden, near the shagbark tree. "What is that funny creaking--do you hear?" "It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear." "If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light. I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right." "I'm sure it's not the shutter. There--again." "It is a tendril fingering the pane." "What glided down the roof and made that thud?" "It is old winter tumbling in the mud." "And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned." Who rides so late in the night and the wind? It is the writer's grief. It is the wild March wind. It is the father with his child. Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last, When she'd be absent from our thoughts, so fast Did life, the wooly caterpillar run. We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun On a white beach with other pink or brown Americans. Flew back to our small town. Found that my bunch of essay The Untamed Seahorse was "universally accalimed" (It sold three hundred copies in one year). Again school started, and on hillsides, where Wound distant roads, one saw the steady stream Of carlights all returning to the dream Of college education. You went on Translating into French Marvell and Donne. It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane Lolita swept from Florida to Maine. Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied. Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. The Crashaw Club had paid me to discuss Why Poetry Is Meaningful To Us. I gave my sermon, a full thing but short. As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart The so-called "question period" at the end, One of those peevish people who attend Such talks only to say they disagree Stood up and pointed his pipe at me. And then it happened--the attack, the trance, Or one of my old fits. There sat by chance A doctor in the front row. At his feet Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat, It seems, and several moments pa**ed before It heaved and went on trudging to a more Conclusive destination. Give me now Your full attention. I can't tell you how I knew--but I did know that I had crossed The border. Everything I loved was lost But no aorta could report regret. A sun of rubber was convulsed and set; And blood-black nothingness began to spin A system of cells interlinked within Cells interlinked within cells interlinked Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct Against the dark, a tall white fountain played. I realized, of course, that it was made Not of our atoms; that the sense behind The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind Of any man is quick to recognize Natural shams, and then before his eyes The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big Wickedly folded moth. But in the case Of my white fountain what it did replace Perceptually was something that, I felt, Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt In the strange world where I was a mere stray. And presently I saw it melt away: Though still unconscious, I was back on earth. The tale I told provoked my doctor's mirth. He doubted very much that in the state He found me in "one could hallucinate Or dream in any sense. Later, perhaps, but not during the actual collapse. No, Mr. Shade." "But, Doctor, I was dead! He smiled. "Not quite: just half a shade," he said. However, I demurred. In mind I kept Replaying the whole thing. Again I stepped Down from the platform, and felt strange and hot, And saw the chap stand up, and toppled, not Because a heckler pointed with his pipe, But probably because the time was ripe For just that bump and wobble on the part Of a limp blimp, an old unstable heart. My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone, The quiddity and quaintness of its own Reality. It was. As time went on, Its constant vertical in triumph shone. Often when troubled by the outer flare Of street and strife, inward I'd turn, and there, There in the background of my soul it stood, Old Faithful! And its presence always would Console me wonderfully. Then, one day, I came across what seemed a twin display. It was a story in a magazine About a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been Rubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand She told her interviewer of "The Land Beyond the Veil" and the account contained A hint of angels, and a glint of stained Windows, and some soft music, and a choice Of hymnal items, and her mother's voice; But at the end she mentioned a remote Landscape, a hazy orchard--and I quote: "Beyond that orchard through a kind of smoke I glimpsed a tall white fountain--and awoke." If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt Sees a new animal and captures it, And if, a little later, Captain Smith Brings back a skin, that island is no myth. Our fountain was a signpost and a mark Objectively enduring in the dark, Strong as a bone, substantial as tooth, And almost vulgar in its robust truth! The article was by Jim Coates. To Jim Forthwith I wrote. Got her address from him. Drove west three hundred miles to talk to her. Arrived. Was met by an impa**ioned purr. Saw that blue hair, those freckled hands, that rapt Orchideous air--and knew that I was trapped. "Who'd miss an opportunity to meet A poet so distinguished?" I was sweet Of me to come! I desperately tried To ask my questions. They were brushed aside. "Perhaps some other time." The journalist Still had her scribblings. I should not insist. She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all Into an idiotic social call. "I can't believe," she said, "that it is you! I loved your poem in the Blue Review. That one about Mont Blanc. I have a niece Who's climbed the Matternhorn. The other piece I could not understand. I mean the sense. Because, of course, the sound--But I'm so dense!" She was. I might have persevered. I might Have made her tell me more about the white Fountain we both had seen "beyond the veil" But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail She'd pounce upon it as upon a fond Affinity, a sacramental bond, Uniting mystically her and me, And in a jiffy our two souls would be Brother and sister trembling on the brink Of tender incest. "Well," I said, "I think It's getting late..." I also called on Coates. He was afraid he had mislaid her notes. He took his article from a steel file: "It's accurate. I have not changed her style. There's one misprint--not that it matters much: Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch." Life Everlasting--based on a misprint! I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint And stop investigating my abyss? But all at once it dawned on me that this Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme; Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream But topsy-turvical coincidence, Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense. Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find Some kind of link and bobolink, some kind Or correlated pattern in the game, Plexed artistry, and something of the same Pleasure in it as they who played it found. It did not matter who they were. No sound, No furtive light came from their involute Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute, Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns To ivory unicorns and ebony fauns; Kindling a long life here, extinguishing A short one there; k**ing a Balkan king; Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high- Flying airplane to plummet from the sky And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys, Gla**es or pipe. Coordinating these Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities. Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is My firm conviction--"Darling, shut the door. Had a nice trip?" Splendid--but what is more I have returned convinced that I can grope My way to some--to some--"Yes, dear?" Faint hope. CANTO FOUR Now I shall spy on beauty as none has Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as None has cried out. Now I shall try what none Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done. And speaking of this wonderful machine: I'm puzzled by the difference between Two methods of composing: A, the kind Which goes on solely in the poet's mind, A testing of performing words, while he Is soaping a third time one leg, and B, The other kind, much more decorous, when He's in his study writing with a pen. In method B the hand supports the thought, The abstract battle is concretely fought. The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar A canceled sunset or restore a star, And thus it physically guides the phrase Toward faint daylight through the inky maze. But method A is agony! The brain Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain. A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which effort of the will Can interrupt, while the automaton Is taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store To buy the paper he has read before. Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, because In penless work there is no pen-poised pause And one must use three hands at the same time, Having to choose the necessary rhyme, Hold the completed line before one's eyes, And keep in mind all the preceding tries? Or is the process deeper with no desk To prop the false and hoist the poetesque? For there are those mysterious moments when Too weary to delete, I drop my pen; I ambulate--and by some mute command The right word flutes and perches on my hand. My best time is the morning; my preferred Season, midsummer. I once overheard Myself awakening while half of me Still slept in bed. I tore my spirit free, And caught up with myself--upon the lawn Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of the dawn, And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe. And then I realized that this half too Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke, And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp, The Shade impress, the mystery inborn. Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn. Since my biographer may be too staid Or know too little to affirm that Shade Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support Running across the tub to hold in place The shaving mirror right before his face And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed." The more I weigh, the less secure my skin; In places it's ridiculously thin; Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick And my grimace, invited the wicked nick. Or this dewlap: some day I must set free The Newport Frill inveterate in me. My Adam's apple is a prickly pear: Now I shall speak of evil and despair As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight, Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke Who in commercials with one gliding stroke Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin, Then wipes his faces and fondly tries his skin. I'm in the cla** of fussy bimanists. As a discreet ephebe in tights a**ists A female in an acrobatic dance, My left hand help, and holds, and shifts its stance. Now I shall speak...Better than any soap Is the sensation for which poets hope When inspiration and its icy blaze, The sudden image, the immediate phrase Over the skin a triple ripple send Making the little hairs all stand on end As in the enlarged animated scheme Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream. Now I shall speak of evil as none has Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz; The white-hosed moron torturing a black Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac; Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools; Music in supermarkets; swimming pools; Brutes, bores, cla**-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks. And while the safety blade with scrap and screak Travels across the country of my cheek, Cars on the highway pa**, and up the steep Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep, And now a silent liner docks, and now Sungla**ers tour Beirut, and now I plough Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows, And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. Man's life as commentary to abstruse Unfinished poem. Note for further use. Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon I eat my egg with. In the afternoon You drive me to the library. We dine At half past six. And that odd music of mime My versipel, is with me everywhere, In carrel and in car, and in my chair. And all the time, and all the time, my love You too are there, beneath the word, above The syllable, to underscore and stress The vital rhythm. One heard a woman's dress Rustle in the days of yore. I've often caught The sound and sense of your approaching thought. And all in you is youth, and you make new, By quoting them, old things I made for you. Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float in that damp carnival, for now I term Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm. (But this transparent thingum does require Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) Gently the day has pa**ed in a sustained Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained And a brown ament, and the noun I meant To use but did not, dry on the cement. Maybe my sensual love for the consonne D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon A feeling of fantastically planned, Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand Existence, or at least a minute part Of my existence, only through my art, In terms of combinatorial delight; And if my private universe scans right, So does the verse of galaxies divine Which I suspect is an iambic line. I'm reasonably sure that we survive And that my darling somewhere is alive, As I am reasonably sure that I Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine, And that they day will probably be fine; so this alarm clock let me set myself, Yawn, and put back Shade's "Poems" on their shelf. But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes. The man must be--what? Eighty? Eighty-two? Was twice my age the year I married you. Where are you? In the garden. I can see Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree. Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click. Clunk. (Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.) A dark Vanessa with a crimson band Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white. And through the flowing shade and ebbing light A man, unheedful of the bu*terfly-- Some neighbor's gardener, I guess--goes by Trundling an empty barrow up the lane.