Pale Fire Read online

  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

  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 or 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

  To the newcomer, no reception, no

  540 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 th
e 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

  Seahorse was "universally acclaimed"

  (It sold three hundred copies in one year).

  Again school started, and on hillsides, where

  Wound distant roads, one saw the steady stream

  Of carlights all returning to the dream

  Of college education. You went on

  Translating into French Marvell and Donne.

  It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane

  680 Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.

  Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.

  Lang made your portrait. And one night I died.

  The Crashaw Club had paid me to discuss

  Why Poetry Is Meaningful to Us.

  I gave my sermon, a dull thing but short.

  As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart

  The so-called "question period" at the end,

  One of those peevish people who attend

  Such talks only to say they disagree

  690 Stood up and pointed with his pipe at me.

  And then it happened--the attack, the trance,

  Or one of my old fits. There sat by chance

  A doctor in the front row. At his feet

  Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat,

  It seems, and several moments passed before

  It heaved and went on trudging to a more

  Conclusive destination. Give me now

  Your full attention.

  I can't tell you how

  I knew--but I did know that I had crossed

  700 The border. Everything I loved was lost

  But no aorta could report regret.

  A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;

  And blood-black nothingness began to spin

  A system of cells interlinked within

  Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

  Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct

  Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

  I realized, of course, that it was made

  Not of our atoms; that the sense behind

  710 The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind

  Of any man is quick to recognize

  Natural shams, and then before his eyes

  The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig

  An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big

  Wickedly folded moth. But in the case

  Of my white fountain what it did replace

  Perceptually was something that, I felt,

  Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt

  In the strange world where I was a mere stray.

  720 And presently I saw it melt away:

  Though still unconscious, I was back on earth.

  The tale I told provoked my doctor's mirth.

  He doubted very much that in the state

  He found me in "one could hallucinate

  Or dream in any sense. Later, perhaps,

  But not during the actual collapse.

  No, Mr. Shade."

  But, Doctor, I was dead!

  He smiled. "Not quite: just half a shade," he said.

  However, I demurred. In mind I kept

  730 Replaying the whole thing. Again I stepped

  Down from the platform, and felt strange and hot,

  And saw that chap stand up, and toppled, not

  Because a heckler pointed with his pipe,

  But probably because the time was ripe

  For just that bump and wobble on the part

  Of a limp blimp, an old unstable heart.

  My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone,

  The quiddity and quaintness of its own

  Reality. It was. As time went on,

  740 Its constant vertical in triumph shone.

  Often when troubled by the outer glare

  Of street and strife, inward I'd turn, and there,

  There in the background of my soul it stood,

  Old Faithful! And its presence always would

  Console me wonderfully. Then, one day,

  I came across what seemed a twin display.

  It was a story in a magazine

  About a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been

  Rubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand.

  750 She told her interviewer of "The Land

  Beyond the Veil" and the account contained

  A hint of angels, and a glint of stained

  Windows, and some soft music, and a choice

  Of hymnal items, and her mother's voice;

  But at the end she mentioned a remote

 
Landscape, a hazy orchard--and I quote:

  "Beyond that orchard through a kind of smoke

  I glimpsed a tall white fountain--and awoke."

  If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt

  760 Sees a new animal and captures it,

  And if, a little later, Captain Smith

  Brings back a skin, that island is no myth.

  Our fountain was a signpost and a mark

  Objectively enduring in the dark,

  Strong as a bone, substantial as a tooth,

  And almost vulgar in its robust truth!

  The article was by Jim Coates. To Jim

  Forthwith I wrote. Got her address from him.

  Drove west three hundred miles to talk to her.

  770 Arrived. Was met by an impassioned purr.

  Saw that blue hair, those freckled hands, that rapt

  Orchideous air--and knew that I was trapped.

  "Who'd miss the opportunity to meet

  A poet so distinguished?" It was sweet

  Of me to come! I desperately tried

  To ask my questions. They were brushed aside:

  "Perhaps some other time." The journalist

  Still had her scribblings. I should not insist.

  She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all

  780 Into an idiotic social call.

  "I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!

  I loved your poem in the Blue Review.

  That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece

  Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece

  I could not understand. I mean the sense.

  Because, of course, the sound--But I'm so dense!"

  She was. I might have persevered. I might

  Have made her tell me more about the white

  Fountain we both had seen "beyond the veil"

  790 But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail

  She'd pounce upon it as upon a fond

  Affinity, a sacramental bond,

  Uniting mystically her and me,

  And in a jiffy our two souls would be

  Brother and sister trembling on the brink

  Of tender incest. "Well," I said, "I think

  It's getting late...."

  I also called on Coates.

  He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.

  He took his article from a steel file:

  800 "It's accurate. I have not changed her style.

  There's one misprint--not that it matters much:

  Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch."

  Life Everlasting--based on a misprint!

  I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,

  And stop investigating my abyss?

  But all at once it dawned on me that this

  Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;

  Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream

  But topsy-turvical coincidence,

  810 Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.

  Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find

  Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind

  Of correlated pattern in the game,

  Plexed artistry, and something of the same

  Pleasure in it as they who played it found.