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After giving it some thought, I now agree with JF and JK that "smudge
of ashen fluff" refers to actual feathers left on the window, rather
than to the waxwing's shadow. I must say this was something of a
shock to me, as I had always seen the opening image as continuous
through line 4. Now I see that line 3 gives us a new image. Whereas
shadow is substanceless, negative space, the smudge is actual
physical residue. This begs the question: why did Shade revise and/or
augment his image from line 1?
As I read it now, Shade seems to be emphasizing that he was (is?)
both matter and anti-matter of the original (waxwing). For those
who don't mind entertaining the theory of Kinbote as secondary
personality of Shade [hey, I can hear you groaning!] I offer the
following possibility. By his own admission, Shade died when he
had his "heart attack," when he became, according to Dr. Ahlert,
"half a shade." This is also the moment when Kinbote "arrived".
Lines 1-4, then, refer to this half-death and Kinbote's emergence.
The waxwing is Shade himself. After the attack, he is left with
the physical residue of his former self (Shade is oft described
as gray, thus ashen) but also with his dark, matterless negative,
Charles Kinbote. As Kinbote grows more powerful, Shade realizes
that CK's world (its reflected, false azure) will at some point
take over. Shade's poem, then, begins as an elegy to himself,
which may in fact explain why he chose couplets, the traditional
form for elegy.
Skipping to the end of the poem, I'm curious if anyone else has
thought twice about that "empty barrow." While this clearly denotes
an empty wheelbarrow, shouldn't we also consider that an "empty
barrow" in a different context means "empty grave"?
Matt Roth