Бледный огонь

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
⁴⁶⁰ 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.
⁴⁷⁰ 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
⁴⁸⁰ 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 cedar trunks, 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
⁴⁹⁰ 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
⁵⁰⁰ 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 death («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.
⁵¹⁰ 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 assist assimilation.
                              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
⁵²⁰ 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