Бледный огонь

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
⁶¹⁰ 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 death 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.

⁶²⁰ 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
⁶³⁰ 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
⁶⁴⁰ Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes 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 death'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
⁶⁵⁰ 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?»
⁶⁶⁰ «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 woolly caterpillar run.
We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun
On a white beach with other pink or brown
⁶⁷⁰ Americans. Flew back to our small town.
Found that my bunch of essays The Untamed