Бледный огонь

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
³⁹⁰ 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
⁴⁰⁰ 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.
                    He took one look at her,
And shot a death ray at well-meaning Jane.

A male hand traced from Florida to Maine
The curving arrows of Aeolian wars.
⁴¹⁰ 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»
⁴²⁰ 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:
⁴³⁰ 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 flock of sails (one blue among the white
Clashed queerly with the sea, and two were red),
⁴⁴⁰ 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 passed by unmasked.

«Are we quite sure she's acting right?» you asked.
«It's technically a blind date, of course.
⁴⁵⁰ Well, shall we try the preview of Remorse?»
And we allowed, in all tranquillity,
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