The Butterflies will Come
Found poem remixing Vladimir Nabokov’s reflective piece ‘Butterflies: the childhood of a lepidopterist’ first published in The New Yorker, June 5, 1948.
A summer morning: chink between shutters, mess
of brown blossoms, flat, fallow leaf or dewy birches moving in sun / rectangle
of framed light: in honeysuckle, a Swallowtail—pale-yellow, black blotches,
blue crenulations, cinnabar eyespot above black tail / desire: a golden fleck
dipping and dodging over timber and tundra to a bright dandelion in a green
glade / I discovered books—four huge brown folios—woodcuts of serpents and
butterflies, seven lion-toothed turtle heads, herbariums of pressed edelweiss and
maple leaves, non-utilitarian delights! / magic! / enchantment! / deception! /
from the first: an intertwinkling / alone, the morning mine—net, pillboxes,
sailor cap, calves quaking, the rough red road that ran between field and
forest / lustre like a tremor of sympathy / Black Erebia dance among the firs /
Coppers rise to a tremendous height / a Thecla: white W on its chocolate brown
underside / colours draw a long death on June evenings, moon above meadow, low
buzz passing from flower to flower, vibration-halo round Hummingbird moth / continuous
shimmer of wings over daisies, bluebells, grassy wonderland at the bottom of a sea
of sun-shot greenery—a dark Fritillary bearing the name of a Norse goddess skimming
low, subtle perfume: vanilla, musky-sweet / I do not believe in time / I like to fold my magic carpet / landscape selected at random,
belied ecstasy in a momentary vacuum, a rush of love with sun and stone, those tender
ghosts
No comments:
Post a Comment