Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

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

Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.

And I'll turn down eternity unless

The melancholy and the tenderness

Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;

The claret taillight of that dwindling plane

Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay

[530] On running out of cigarettes; the way

You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime

Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,

This index card, this slender rubber band

Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,

Are found in Heaven by the newlydead

Stored in its strongholds through the years.

Instead

The Institute assumed it might be wise

Not to expect too much of paradise:

What if there's nobody to say hullo

[540] To the newcomer, no reception, no

Indoctrination? What if you are tossed

Into a boundless void, 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 dim bed,

Herself a blur in your dissolving head!

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

[550] 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.

[560] 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

[570] 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

[580] 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 killed 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 jewel case?

And why does she avert her fierce young face?

For as we know from dreams it is so hard

[590] 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 killed 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

[600] Political, some uniformed baboon?

We'll think of matters only known to us —

Empires of rhyme, Indies of calculus;

Listen to distant cocks 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

[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 néant; 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