Soft Sound
by Vladimir Nabokov
When in some coastal townlet, on a night of low clouds and ennui, you open the window -- from afar whispering sounds spill over. Now listen closely and discern the sound of seawaves breathing upon land, protecting in the night the soul that harkens unto them.
Daylong the murmur of the sea is muted, but the unbidden day now passes (tinkling as does an empty tumbler on a glass shelf);
and once again amidst the sleepless hush open your window, wider, wider, and with the sea you are alone in the enormous and calm world.
Not the sea’s sound… In the still night I hear a different reverberation: the soft sound of my native land, her respiration and pulsation.
Therein blend all the shades of voices so dear, so quickly interrupted and melodies of Pushkin’s verse and sighs of a remembered pine wood.
Repose and happiness are there, a blessing upon exile; yet the soft sound cannot be heard by day drowned by the scurrying and rattling.
But in the compensating night, in sleepless silence, one keeps listening to one’s own country, to her murmuring, her deathless deep.
