I just posted something, just below--don't look yet!--composed of a favorite poetic passage, the picture it inspires in me, and an explanation about their interaction. But once it posted on the website, I read through the lines again, it worked completely differently with the picture. That is, it failed to work. The metaphors refuse to materialize on my internal projection screen when the concrete image is right there alongside trumping them.

So I'm reposting just the passage here, for two reasons:

1. For reasons which should be obvious if and when you read the second post--not yet!--I couldn't bear to take the picture down. But I didn't want to deprive you the wonder of enjoying those words unfettered again either.

2. I'm curious whether this is a universal (or at least common) reaction. If you read both posts (this one first!--are you listening?), please click on the comments tag (in this post, preferably), and let us know if the picture also shut down the visualization of the metaphors for you. (Or does that only happen when the picture represents the embodiment of the poetry to the individual reading it?)

Here's the original passage, with the original title and introduction:

Nabokov for the week--Guest blogger, William S.

In the whole wide world of literature, that I know of, so far, there's one little passage I admire more than anything written by our good friend Vladimir--that I know of, so far.

So making a very special one-time-only guest blogging appearance--offering a slight variation of the usual text, explained down below at the second asterisk**--may I present the master of the word usement, our slightly more foreign* friend William S:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat his eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if his eyes were there, they in his head?

The brightness of his cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; his eye in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

In the whole wide world of literature, that I know of, so far, there's one little passage I admire more than anything written by our good friend Vladimir--that I know of, so far.

So making a very special one-time-only guest blogging appearance--offering a slight variation of the usual text, explained down below at the second asterisk**--may I present the master of the word usement, our slightly more foreign* friend William S:

Two of the fairest stars in all of heaven,

Having some business, do entreat his eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if his eyes were there, they in his head?

The brightness of his cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; his eye in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

* Nabokov may have been born in Russia, but he's far less foreign to me than Shakespeare. Apparently time is thicker than space.

** It may be sacrilege to some of you, but yes, I flipped it around to read to a man. Because in my little head, I am reading it to a man. Because . . .

I had no intention of doing this as I started typing, but those lines always make a mess of me, and now the keyboard's all soaked and . . .

And of course my thoughts ran straight to that boy who walked out of my life again May 16th. No chance of getting back with him, because we don't belong together, but I do still love him, so one last time I'm going to dedicate that passage to him. There he is pictured in a happy moment last Halloween. (I cropped myself out of the shot, because this passage is just about him, not the two of us, and it just did not seem right to squeeze me in there with him. I'm going to post the full pic shortly at a new pix page on my author site here.)

So I just couldn't bear all the hers in there beside a picture of him. Too many people would read it way too literally, and I get enough of that "girl" shit from gayboys already; he's never been a girl to me, just a guy who luckily likes to love men.  Besides, when I'd sit up in bed in the morning and beg him to let me read it again--giving him a rare break from all the Nabokov passages and the Catcher in the Rye ending over and over again--I always changed the hers for him then. That's how it reads in my head, so that's how I'm displaying it here. You can change it back in your own head; this one's just for him and me.