A Poem on Proust's Novel

Like life the novel's just too long to grasp:
Perhaps an index will show what they mean.
Over a hundred entries deal with LOVE
-Alas! - almost two hundred ALBERTINE.

The index drives us back into the text,
The text to life; until we see again
How they both hover on the edge of what
The entries of an index would explain.

-- Roy Fuller, from Counterparts (1954)