Selected for Immortal Muse by Zireaux (read Zireaux’s comments on this poem)
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or “starlet.”
Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze.
I cannot get out, said the starling).
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?
Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-capped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!
Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin’, darlin’?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin’).
Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
L’autre soir un air froid d’opera m’alita;
Son fele — bien fol est qui s’y fie!
Il neige, le decor s’ecroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu’ai-je fait de ta vie?
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I’m dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.
Officer, officer, there they go–
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.
Officer, officer, there they are–
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out and take cover.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.
Zireaux’s comments on this poem:
We can now compare, in the history of poetic love, Shakespeare’s rich desire, Poe’s wistful longing, and here the sick “wanting” of Nabokov’s mad monkey, Humbert Humbert. Wanted, wanted. Humbert, Humbert. Demanding, fist-banging trochees. Here we have a “wanting” that’s criminal. A “wanted” poster, in fact, with Humbert’s grim-jawed mug should appear in the post office, but here, in Humbert’s twisted imagination, as he ulolitates over his lost love, we have what’s known as a “want-ad.” (Ironic, as want-ads are posted for people we’ve yet to meet; not for pets — or “car pets” — we’ve lost). Note how Nabokov has stolen his L’s from Poe. Lo-lee-ta. Oo-la-loo-may. Each stanza is four lines, with practically no enjambment — everything finely crafted and musical — with the rhymes alternating male and female, all nearly perfect and clever and cloyingly sweet (not unlike Poe’s) until the very last pairing: hardest/stardust. “Est” and “ust. “And the rest is rust and stardust.” With its unexpected slant rhyme, this is the most beautiful, most haunting and Poe-etic line of this poem; and seems to confirm what Poe and Shakespeare also recognize about beauty: that it will follow its own rules; that it will forever elude a cruel and calculating mind.
