"Your ruby ring made life and laid the law.

Oh, switch it off! And as life snapped we saw
A pinhead light dwindle and die in black

Infinity.

                                                 

         Out of his lakeside shack
 A watchman, Father Time, all gray and bent,
Emerged with his uneasy dog and went
Along the reedy bank. He came too late."

                   (Pale Fire, 465/477)                                                          
 
 
The juxtaposition of Sybil's power over life and death and Hazel's suicide struck me with a new strenght this time, after the cartoonlike mockery about TV adverts and oozy prides. The strange element, for me, lies in the lines: "die in black Infinity."  


 
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