Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

The syllable, to underscore and stress

The vital rhythm. One heard a woman's dress

Rustle in 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

[960] Everything «Poems,» and no longer squirm.

(But this transparent thingum does require

Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.)

Gently the day has passed 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,

[970] Richly rhymed life.

I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part

Of my existence, only through my art,

In terms of combinational 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

[980] Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July

The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,

And that the 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

[990] 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 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 butterfly —

Some neighbor's gardener, I guess — goes by

Trundling an empty barrow up the lane.

[1000] […]