New Novel Poem

Note: I’ve got into a habit of looking forward (and finding) passages in the books I read that seem to want to be poetry. I write down a few as a way to remember the novels better. Here’s a recent one from Nabokov’s Bend Sinister, which I’m reading for the first time.

Bend

I am a lake.

I am a tongue.

I am a spirit.

I am fevered.

I am not covetous.

I am the Dark Cavalier.

I am the torch.

I arise. I ask. I blow.

I bring. I cannot change.

I cannot look.

I climb the hill.

I come. I dream. I envy.

I found. I heard.

I intended an Ode.

I know. I love.

I must not grieve,

my love. I never.

I pant. I remember.

I saw thee once.

I travelled. I wandered.

I will. I will. I will. I will.

— Found poem in Bend Sinister, Vladimir Nabokov, page 28 of my 1964 Time Reading Program Special Edition