back to Vladimir Nabokov

“Oculus” by Vladimir Nabokov 🇷🇺🇺🇸 (22 Apr 1899 – 2 Jul 1977)
Translated from the Russian by the author
To a single colossal oculus,
without lids, without face, without brow,
without halo of marginal flesh,
man is finally limited now.
​
And without any fear having glanced
at the earth (quite unlike the old freak
that was dappled all over with seas
and smiled with the sun on one cheek),
​
not mountains he sees and not waves,
not some gulf that brilliantly shines,
and not the silent old cinema
of clouds, and grainfields, and vines,
​
and of course not a part of the parlor
with his kin’s leaden faces—oh, no,
in the stillness of his revolutions
nothing in that respect will he know.
​
Gone, in fact, is the break between matter
and eternity; and who can care
for a world of omnipotent vision,
if nothing is monogrammed there?