Pale Fire Read online

  And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall

  Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall.

  Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill

  I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill.

  That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.

  120 A thousand years ago five minutes were

  Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.

  Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and

  Infinite aftertime: above your head

  They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

  The regular vulgarian, I daresay,

  Is happier: he sees the Milky Way

  Only when making water. Then as now

  I walked at my own risk: whipped by the bough,

  Tripped by the stump. Asthmatic, lame and fat,

  130 I never bounced a ball or swung a bat.

  I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

  By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.

  I had a brain, five senses (one unique),

  But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.

  In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps

  But really envied nothing--save perhaps

  The miracle of a lemniscate left

  Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft

  Bicycle tires.

  A thread of subtle pain,

  140 Tugged at by playful death, released again,

  But always present, ran through me. One day,

  When I'd just turned eleven, as I lay

  Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy--

  A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy--

  Bypass chair legs and stray beneath the bed,

  There was a sudden sunburst in my head.

  And then black night. That blackness was sublime.

  I felt distributed through space and time:

  One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand

  150 Under the pebbles of a panting strand,

  One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain,

  In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain.

  There were dull throbs in my Triassic; green

  Optical spots in Upper Pleistocene,

  An icy shiver down my Age of Stone,

  And all tomorrows in my funnybone.

  During one winter every afternoon

  I'd sink into that momentary swoon.

  And then it ceased. Its memory grew dim.

  160 My health improved. I even learned to swim.

  But like some little lad forced by a wench

  With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,

  I was corrupted, terrified, allured,

  And though old doctor Colt pronounced me cured

  Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains,

  The wonder lingers and the shame remains.

  CANTO TWO

  There was a time in my demented youth

  When somehow I suspected that the truth

  About survival after death was known

  170 To every human being: I alone

  Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy

  Of books and people hid the truth from me.

  There was the day when I began to doubt

  Man's sanity: How could he live without

  Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom

  Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb?

  And finally there was the sleepless night

  When I decided to explore and fight

  The foul, the inadmissible abyss,

  180 Devoting all my twisted life to this

  One task. Today I'm sixty-one. Waxwings

  Are berry-pecking. A cicada sings.

  The little scissors I am holding are

  A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.

  I stand before the window and I pare

  My fingernails and vaguely am aware

  Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,

  Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum

  College astronomer Starover Blue;

  190 The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;

  The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;

  And little pinky clinging to her skirt.

  And I make mouths as I snip off the thin

  Strips of what Aunt Maud used to call "scarf-skin."

  Maud Shade was eighty when a sudden hush

  Fell on her life. We saw the angry flush

  And torsion of paralysis assail

  Her noble cheek. We moved her to Pinedale,

  Famed for its sanitarium. There she'd sit

  200 In the glassed sun and watch the fly that lit

  Upon her dress and then upon her wrist.

  Her mind kept fading in the growing mist.

  She still could speak. She paused, and groped, and found

  What seemed at first a serviceable sound,

  But from adjacent cells impostors took

  The place of words she needed, and her look

  Spelt imploration as she sought in vain

  To reason with the monsters in her brain.

  What moment in the gradual decay

  210 Does resurrection choose? What year? What day?

  Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?

  Are some less lucky, or do all escape?

  A syllogism: other men die; but I

  Am not another; therefore I'll not die.

  Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,

  A singing in the ears. In this hive I'm

  Locked up. Yet, if prior to life we had

  Been able to imagine life, what mad,

  Impossible, unutterably weird,

  220 Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared!

  So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why

  Scorn a hereafter none can verify:

  The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks

  With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,

  The seraph with his six flamingo wings,

  And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?

  It isn't that we dream too wild a dream:

  The trouble is we do not make it seem

  Sufficiently unlikely; for the most

  230 We can think up is a domestic ghost.

  How ludicrous these efforts to translate

  Into one's private tongue a public fate!

  Instead of poetry divinely terse,

  Disjointed notes, Insomnia's mean verse!

  Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

  Anonymous.

  Espied on a pine's bark,

  As we were walking home the day she died,

  An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed,

  Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,

  240 A gum-logged ant.

  That Englishman in Nice,

  A proud and happy linguist: je nourris

  Les pauvres cigales--meaning that he

  Fed the poor sea gulls!

  Lafontaine was wrong:

  Dead is the mandible, alive the song.

  And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear

  Your steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear.

  Sybil, throughout our high-school days I knew

  Your loveliness, but fell in love with you

  During an outing of the senior class

  250 To New Wye Falls. We luncheoned on damp grass.

  Our teacher of geology discussed

  The cataract. Its roar and rainbow dust

  Made the tame park romantic. I reclined

  In April's haze immediately behind

  Your slender back and watched your neat small head

  Bend to one side. One palm with fingers spread,

  Between a star of trillium and a stone,

  Pressed on the turf. A little phalange bone

  Kept twitching. Then you turned and offered me

  260 A thimbleful of bright metallic tea.

  Your profile has not changed. The glistening teeth

  Biting the careful l
ip; the shade beneath

  The eye from the long lashes; the peach down

  Rimming the cheekbone; the dark silky brown

  Of hair brushed up from temple and from nape;

  The very naked neck; the Persian shape

  Of nose and eyebrow, you have kept it all--

  And on still nights we hear the waterfall.

  Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,

  270 My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest

  My Admirable butterfly! Explain

  How could you, in the gloam of Lilac Lane,

  Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade

  Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?

  We have been married forty years. At least

  Four thousand times your pillow has been creased

  By our two heads. Four hundred thousand times

  The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimes

  Has marked our common hour. How many more

  280 Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?

  I love you when you're standing on the lawn

  Peering at something in a tree: "It's gone.

  It was so small. It might come back" (all this

  Voiced in a whisper softer than a kiss).

  I love you when you call me to admire

  A jet's pink trail above the sunset fire.

  I love you when you're humming as you pack

  A suitcase or the farcical car sack

  With round-trip zipper. And I love you most

  290 When with a pensive nod you greet her ghost

  And hold her first toy on your palm, or look

  At a postcard from her, found in a book.

  She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend:

  Nature chose me so as to wrench and rend

  Your heart and mine. At first we'd smile and say:

  "All little girls are plump" or "Jim McVey

  (The family oculist) will cure that slight

  Squint in no time." And later: "She'll be quite

  Pretty, you know"; and, trying to assuage

  300 The swelling torment: "That's the awkward age."

  "She should take riding lessons," you would say

  (Your eyes and mine not meeting). "She should play

  Tennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!

  She may not be a beauty, but she's cute."

  It was no use, no use. The prizes won

  In French and history, no doubt, were fun;

  At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,

  And one shy little guest might be left out;

  But let's be fair: while children of her age

  310 Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage

  That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,

  My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,

  A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,

  And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.

  Another winter was scrape-scooped away.

  The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May.

  Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.

  Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned

  Into a wood duck. And again your voice:

  320 "But this is prejudice! You should rejoice

  That she is innocent. Why overstress

  The physical? She wants to look a mess.

  Virgins have written some resplendent books.

  Lovemaking is not everything. Good looks

  Are not that indispensable!" And still

  Old Pan would call from every painted hill,

  And still the demons of our pity spoke:

  No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke;

  The telephone that rang before a ball

  330 Every two minutes in Sorosa Hall

  For her would never ring; and, with a great

  Screeching of tires on gravel, to the gate

  Out of the lacquered night, a white-scarfed beau

  Would never come for her; she'd never go,

  A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance.

  We sent her, though, to a chateau in France.

  And she returned in tears, with new defeats,

  New miseries. On days when all the streets

  Of College Town led to the game, she'd sit

  340 On the library steps, and read or knit;

  Mostly alone she'd be, or with that nice

  Frail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice,

  With a Korean boy who took my course.

  She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force

  Of character--as when she spent three nights

  Investigating certain sounds and lights

  In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,

  Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."

  She called you a didactic katydid.

  350 She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,

  It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize

  Ferociously our projects, and with eyes

  Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed

  Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head

  With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,

  Murmuring dreadful words in monotone.

  She was my darling: difficult, morose--

  But still my darling. You remember those

  Almost unruffled evenings when we played

  360 Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which made

  Her almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled,

  The lights were merciful, the shadows mild.

  Sometimes I'd help her with a Latin text,

  Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, next

  To my fluorescent lair, and you would be

  In your own study, twice removed from me,

  And I would hear both voices now and then:

  "Mother, what's grimpen?" "What is what?"

  "Grim Pen."

  Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again:

  370 "Mother, what's chtonic?" That, too, you'd explain,

  Appending: "Would you like a tangerine?"

  "No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?"

  You'd hesitate. And lustily I'd roar

  The answer from my desk through the closed door.

  It does not matter what it was she read

  (some phony modern poem that was said

  In English Lit to be a document

  "Engazhay and compelling"--what this meant

  Nobody cared); the point is that the three

  380 Chambers, then bound by 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 w
elled.

  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

  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).