freedom

you drag yourself the length of the insomniac street

and you have lost the aureole

that strove us to love and to the height

the torch is doused you shakily hold

on corpses a broken wing you fold

an elbow over your eyes like a sheet

befooled once more you exit full of dole

and night eternal ah’s the tale that’s told

Vladimir Nabokov
tr. after V.N.