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My Brother Knows Nabokov*

My Brother Knows Nabokov*

When with close listening

we draw meaning

from disarticulation

his constricted life expands

and rolls along in curves and cuts  

as alluvial streams trace through

the silting out 

of memories and plans,

of Bond movies watched on DVD, 

the nightly news of ’76, his two flights west

and Alice Cooper lyrics. 


Broken twigs and latticed leaves tumble loose 

pressured by his very certain reveries

of hard-edged, dark, unbounded efficacy. 


Today:   His guilty premonition 

of the oil train explosion,  

a smoldering conspiracy,  

just across the border.


This tragedy rises, not 

from a loss of meaning,

but in the raging 

floods of consequence.





*Vladimir Nabokov wrote about parents caring for their schizophrenic son and “Referential mania” where he

     “imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and 

existence…. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly 

detailed information regarding him. His in-most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual 

alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees.”   

V. Nabokov, Symbols and Signs, The New Yorker, May 15, 1948.     

 

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