Achtung Baby!

monotonous & unfocussed

12
Instead, there was a new distraction:
something in my memory flashing,
as if unfocussed, and then clearer,
only to vanish once again.
Then I became abruptly bored
by work with needle and with screw,
observing the shimmer in the pattern,
of monotonous infusoria,
unravelling the bowels of a grass snake.
No longer did the lab seem heaven;
I started to imagine how, at the vicar’s,
she and I would meet once more.

The University Poem, Vladimir Nabokov

+ Vladimir Nabokov, beyond the novels
+ 'Selected Poems': The Essential Nabokov In Verse

Comments

monotonous & unfocussed

12
Instead, there was a new distraction:
something in my memory flashing,
as if unfocussed, and then clearer,
only to vanish once again.
Then I became abruptly bored
by work with needle and with screw,
observing the shimmer in the pattern,
of monotonous infusoria,
unravelling the bowels of a grass snake.
No longer did the lab seem heaven;
I started to imagine how, at the vicar’s,
she and I would meet once more.

The University Poem, Vladimir Nabokov

+ Vladimir Nabokov, beyond the novels
+ 'Selected Poems': The Essential Nabokov In Verse