Владимир Набоков - Стихотворения

Esmeralda! Now we rest
Here, in the bewitched and blest
Mountain forests of the West.

Here the very air is stranger.
Damzel, anchoret, and ranger
Share the woodland's dream and danger.

And to think I deemed you dead!
(In a dungeon, it was said;
Tortured, strangled); but instead —

Blue birds from the bluest fable,
Bear and hare in coats of sable,
Peacock moth on picnic table.

Huddled roadsigns softly speak
Of Lake Merlin, Castle Creek,
And (obliterated) Peak.

Do you recognize that clover?
Dandelions, I'or du pauvre?[17]
(Europe, nonetheless, is over).

Up the turf, along the burn,
Latin lilies climb and turn
Into Gothic fir and fern.

Cornfields have befouled the prairies
But these canyons laugh! And there is
Still the forest with its fairies.

And I rest where I awoke
In the sea shade — l'ombre glauque[18]—
Of a legendary oak;

Where the woods get ever dimmer,
Where the Phantom Orchids glimmer —
Esmeralda, immer, immer.[19]

I have followed you, model,
in magazine ads through all seasons,
from dead leaf on the sod
to red leaf on the breeze,

from your lily-white armpit
to the tip of your butterfly eyelash,
charming and pitiful,
silly and stylish.

Or in kneesocks and tartan
standing there like some fabulous symbol,
parted feet pointing outward
— pedal form of akimbo.

On a lawn, in a parody
Of Spring and its cherry tree,
near a vase and a parapet,
virgin practicing archery.

Ballerina, black-masked,
near a parapet of alabaster.
«Can one — somebody asked —
rhyme „star“ and „disaster“?»

Can one picture a blackbird
as the negative of a small firebird?
Can a record, run backward,
turn «repaid» into «diaper»?

Can one marry a model?
Kill your past, make you real, raise a family,
by removing you bodily
from back numbers of Sham?

1 What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring heard,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stem and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose —
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.

2 Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task — a poet's patience
And scholiastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument.

How mobile is the bed on these
nights of gesticulating trees
    when the rain clatters fast,
the tin-toy rain with dapper hoof
trotting upon an endless roof,
    traveling into the past.

Upon old roads the steeds of rain
Slip and slow down and speed again
    through many a tangled year;
but they can never reach the last
dip at the bottom of the past
    because the sun is there.

That Sunday morning, at half past ten,
Two cars crossed the creek and entered the glen.

In the first was Art Longwood, a local florist,
With his children and wife (now Mrs. Deforest).

In the one that followed, a ranger saw
Art's father, stepfather and father-in-law.

The three old men walked off to the cove.
Through tinkling weeds Art slowly drove.

Fair was the morning, with bright clouds afar.
Children and comics emerged from the car.

Silent Art, who could state at a thing all day,
Watched a bug climb a stalk and fly away.

Pauline had asthma, Paul used a crutch.
They were cute little rascals but could not run much.

«I wish», said his mother to crippled Paul,
«Some man would teach you to pitch that ball».

Silent Art took the ball and tossed it high.
It stuck in a tree that was passing by.

And the grave green pilgrim turned and stopped.
The children waited, but no ball dropped.

«I never climbed trees in my timid prime»,
Thought Art; and forthwith started to climb.

Now and then his elbow or knee could be seen
In a jigsaw puzzle of blue and green.

Up and up Art Longwood swarmed and shinned,
And the leaves said yes to the questioning wind.

What tiaras of gardens! What torrents of light!
How accessible ether! How easy flight!

His family circled the tree all day.
Pauline concluded: «Dad climbed away».

None saw the delirious celestial crowds
Greet the hero from earth in the snow of the clouds.

Mrs. Longwood was getting a little concerned.
He never came down. He never returned.

She found some change at the foot of the tree.
The children grew bored. Paul was stung by a bee.

The old men walked over and stood looking up,
Each holding five cards and a paper cup.

Cars on the highway stopped, backed, and then
Up a rutted road waddled into the glen.

And the tree was suddenly full of noise,
Conventioners, fishermen, freckled boys.

Anacondas and pumas were mentioned by some,
And all kinds of humans continued to come:

Tree surgeons, detectives, the fire brigade.
An ambulance parked in the dancing shade.

A drunken rogue with a rope and a gun
Arrived on the scene to see justice done.

Explorers, dendrologists — all were there;
And a strange pale girl with gypsy hair.

And from Cape Fear to Cape Flattery
Every paper had: Man Lost in Tree.

And the sky-bound oak (where owls had perched
And the moon dripped gold) was felled and searched.

They discovered some inchworms, a red-cheeked gall,
And an ancient nest with a new-laid ball.

They varnished the stump, put up railings and signs.
Restrooms nestled in roses and vines.

Mrs. Longwood, retouched, when the children died,
Became a photographer's dreamy bride.

And now the Deforests, with four old men,
Like regular tourists visit the glen;

Munch their lunches, look up and down,
Wash their hands, and drive back to town.

Like silent ships we two in darkness met,
   And when some day the poet's careless fame
   Shall breathe to you a half-forgotten name —
Soul of my song, I want you to regret.
For you had Love. Out of my life you tore
   One shining page. I want, if we must part,
   Remembrance pale to quiver in your heart
Like moonlit foam upon a windy shore.

Music of windy woods, an endless song
Rippling in gleaming glades of Long Ago,
You follow me on tiptoe, swift and slow,
Through many a dreary year.... Ah, it was wrong
To wound those gentle trees! I dream and roam
O'er sun-tormented plains, from brook to brook,
And thence by stone grey thundering cities. Home,
My home magnificent is but a word
On a withered page in an old, dusty book.
Oh, wistful birch trees! I remember days
Of beauty: ferns; a green and golden mare;
A toadstool like a giant lady bird;
A fairy path; bells, tinkling bells, and sighs;
Whimsical orioles; white-rimmed butterflies
Fanning their velvet wings on velvet silver stems....
All is dead. Who cares, who understands?
Not even God.... I saw mysterious lands
And sailed to nowhere with blue-winged waves
Whirling around me. I have roved and raved
In southern harbours among drunken knaves,
And passed by narrow streets, scented and paved
With moonlight pale. There have I called and kissed
Veiled women swaying in a rhythmic mist,
But lonesome was my soul, and cold the night....
And if sometimes, when in the fading light
Chance friends would chatter, suddenly I grew
Restless and then quite still, — Ah, it was
Music of you, windy woods!

I dream of simple tender things:
a moonlit road and tinkling bells.
Ah, drearly the coachboy sings,
but sadness into beauty swells;

swells, and is lost in moonlight dim…
the singer sighs, and then the moon
full gently passes back to him
the quivering, unfinished tune.

In distant lands, on hill and plain,
thus do I dream, when nights are long, —
and memory gives back again
the whisper of that long-lost song.

To many things I've said the word that cheats
the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai
which means «good-bye») — to furnished flats, to streets,
to milk-white letters melting in the sky;
to drab designs that habit seldom sees,
to novels interrupted by the din
of tunnels, annotated by quick trees,
abandoned with a squashed banana skin;
to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,
to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;
also to things of lyrical renown
perhaps more universal, such as love.
Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly.... And so that's that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.
To all these things I've said the fatal word,
using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed
that — like some ancient sonneteer — I heard
its echoes by posterity acclaimed.
But now thou too must go; just here we part,
softest of tongues, my true one, all my own....
And I am left to grope for heart and art
and start anew with clumsy tools of stone.

He happens to be a French poet, that thin,
book-carrying man with a bristly gray chin;
        you meet him wherever you go
across the bright campus, past ivy-clad walls.
The wind which is driving him mad (this recalls
        a rather good line in Hugo),
keeps making blue holes in the waterproof gloss
of college-bred poplars that rustle and toss
        their slippery shadows at pied
young beauties, all legs, as they bicycle through
his shoulder, his armpit, his heart, and the two
        big books that are hurting his side.

Verlaine had been also a teacher. Somewhere
in England. And what about great Baudelaire,
        alone in his Belgian hell?
This ivy resembles the eyes of the deaf.
Come, leaf, name a country beginning with «f»;
        for instance, «forget» or «farewell».
Thus dimly he muses and dreamily heeds
his eavesdropping self as his body recedes,
        dissolving in sun-shattered shade.
L'Envoi: Those poor chairs in the Bois, one of which
legs up, stuck half-drowned in the slime of a ditch
        while others were grouped in a glade.