As We Know

by John Ashbery

  Where it is until the next time.

  Like a summer job in a department store

  It stays on and on,

  Breaking up the moments, hiding

  The kissing,

  Taking whatever is there away from us.

  Its temperature is darkness,

  Its taste, the silent, bitter welcome

  On the edge of the forest

  When you were starting to reach home.

  Also, too much is written

  About it, as though each time

  Were starting from zero toward an imaginary

  Number. No one sees it’s

  Just the evening news, mostly,

  A translation into the light of day,

  Or two fiddles scraping along

  Out of kindness, you think, but

  To whom? In short, any kind of tame

  Manifestation against the straw

  Of darkness and the darkening trees

  Until the aftertaste claimed it.

  Nothing here is like the

  Wet, hot vigil

  That loneliness erected:

  There is nothing here that can be seen

  The way that city could be seen,

  Most precisely at night, perhaps

  When thousands of tongues inspect it

  And the outline of its state of mind

  Tapers off hard and clear

  Until the next time.

  The noises in the bedroom dissolve slowly

  And at last the thread holds

  So that the lining adheres strictly

  Or as a plumb line erected straight into the air

  To stand for all vertical constructions

  That chide and quietly amaze

  The pale blue of the sky.

  The shops here don’t sell anything

  One would want to buy.

  It’s even hard to tell exactly what

  They’re selling—in one, you might

  Find a pile of ventilators next

  To a lot of cuckoo-clock parts,

  Plus used government documents and stacks

  Of cans of brine shrimp, and an

  Extremely elegant saleslady, in

  Printed chiffon, seeming to be from a different

  World entirely. But that’s—que voulez-vous?—

  Par for the course, I guess. You

  Pick up certain things here, where

  You need them, and

  Do without the others for the moment,

  Essential though they may be.

  Every collection is as notable for its gaps

  As for what’s there. The wisest among us

  Collect gaps, knowing it’s the only way

  To realize a more complete collection

  Than one’s neighbor’s. It’s also cheaper

  And easier to show off to advantage.

  At night rain whips the collection,

  The plunge, the surge of the tide

  Drowns the memory of it. Only a dark field remains

  But with the return of morning, the same

  Familiar sticks and pieces poke

  Their extremities out of the dewy mound of straw.

  The collection, at least for some people,

  Is still there. And it matters

  To them, and to tax collectors

  And taxation buffs, because

  Now none of it will get lost

  Any more than it already has. A

  Garage can contain it.

  All

  Evening I have waited for your call.

  The early period was never like this.

  Even birds are happier than this.

  You have

  No right to take something out of life

  And then put it back, knowingly, beside

  Its double, from whom

  The original tensions unwittingly came.

  The collection matures.

  Amateurs flock to it, to get a look at it.

  And some day the idea

  Will have been removed, extracted,

  From the flurry of particulars

  From numbered exhibits,

  And the collected will have no end.

  A few always stay behind mechanically

  On a glimpsed piece of scaffolding.

  There are many of us to choose from:

  Blowhards, barnacles, old fogeys

  Rushing up from under the earth

  Into the sun!

  It doesn’t matter that the fruit is greenish,

  Or that the ill-defined sidewalks seem to lead nowhere

  As long as the clock is stowed in somebody’s luggage.

  The round smile of celebration

  Is always there,

  Is part of the permanent scenery

  Of this age’s accumulation

  And seeps, or drifts, only a little.

  My dear yesterday,

  You were ugly and full of promise

  And today the delta is forming:

  The water, or is it sandbars, stretching away

  Almost too far for them to mean to each other

  What they still mean to us.

  Another thing they can do to you

  Is also celebration, but of another kind:

  The dance that is a brown study

  Under the skylight,

  The music of eternal moping

  As far as it goes, since eternity

  Is an eye, and some things elude the eye:

  Polite gestures, timid farewells

  Alongside a flooded creek in April,

  The false sparkle, the finish, the edge.

  These permutate, combine

  In a gentle ellipse of spoken vagaries

  That pester nobody, and yet

  How few invitations are received!

  They say they’re having trouble with the mails

  And so many people have moved as

  We become an increasingly mobile populace

  In the deep shade of a quiet trailer park

  Where nobody minds waiting

  For one to finish examining the elaborate

  Mechanical toys of the last century

  Or playing warped, scratched 78 records

  Of the great coloraturas of the past.

  One is always free to sink into history

  Up to the waist, and the mountains are

  Now so breathtakingly close to the city

  That it’s like taking a vacation

  Just to stay home and look at them.

  That’s all one can do.

  Inhaling the while the extremely cold

  Fresh cement smell which you must pass

  On your way to school.

  For all those with erysipelas

  And the wrinkles on the forehead

  And the cheeks that come from within, like reverse scars

  For all those wearing old clothes

  With the dormant look of expectation about them

  For the women ironing

  And who cut into lengths of white cloth

  The glass stopper has been removed

  We can breathe! The ocean has been pulled away.

  I was over to the dog show the other day and

  Noticed a nice-looking girl gazing around

  As if puzzled. I went over to her and said:

  “Pardon me, but can’t you find the kennel

  You wish?

  If not, I shall be glad to assist you.”

  “Oh, thank you!” she replied. “Would you

  Mind showing me where they are exhibiting the ocean greyhounds?”

  I came out here originally I

  Came to this flat place

  On the side away from the sun,

  I think my stain must be cauterized.

  I have touched no drink

  For an elevenmonth, yet my head

  Seems stuck in my collar. I have

  No friends because I move too rapidly

  From place to place, only an assistant.
>
  The time is always false dawn

  In Indian Summer. Faded markings on

  The floor where I walk could have

  Been produced by me, or at best

  Some outside agency. I have no reason

  To rejoice in my mummy condition, yet

  Am fairly happy from day to day

  Like a steeple rejoicing in the sun

  It is the last to shake hands with.

  I wear my weather

  With a good-natured air of secrecy,

  And have no trouble finding my way home

  Once the fun is done. I can sleep.

  I can stand up. The buzzing in the vault

  Of the temple disturbs me only insofar

  As I consult my pocket watch and replace it

  Affably in my breast-pocket. But

  There is a time and a light

  Which do not approach, which leave me

  In the years.

  Don’t flog it. Remember how

  Insane your other undertakings seemed to you,

  How hopeless your desires, how tortured

  The ambience, or riddled

  With the stuff of hazard.

  The orgy

  Bubbles away, the vapors weep their burthen to the ground.

  But in that hotel

  The night is ongoing, the rain

  Continues. Too much of a philosophy

  Is about all it can stand, and we wait

  For the men and ducks to go away, and still

  Most everything stays with us,

  Rooted in thoughtful soil.

  The elephant’s-foot umbrella stand

  That used to be over there, why,

  Somebody must have changed it, or the last

  Catastrophe fished it up out of the depths

  Beyond heaven, or it is here,

  For us to see, yet absent for a while.

  Or perhaps someone merely heard of it

  Or it got written down the wrong way

  In a page of an account book that got mailed

  In a letter by mistake. Perhaps the dust,

  That emptiness on the outside of air, ate it.

  Or in the bin of odd-size and discontinued

  Artifacts it holds its own while seen

  Only partially because the surrounding

  Knobs and hues rob it of a full presence.

  Or a photograph was taken, after which

  It could be destroyed, and now

  The photograph and the negative are lost

  Up ahead in one of the strands

  Where one shall encounter this and all the

  Other deviating forms of momentary life

  In a contradiction which shall make its point.

  I like to imagine though

  That nothing so awkward as the stand ever

  Existed. It must have been

  The trunk of an old apple tree

  And bees hollowed it out to make honey,

  Itself now gone, a remnant

  Of a memory, a gesture time made

  To no one in particular, to itself

  Or not even to itself, a tic,

  A twinge long invisible now

  On the low-pressure area

  On the weather map. A tremor

  Far removed from the individual man

  And his daily wants, a number

  To be looked up in a book, or the catalogue number

  Of that book, or both,

  The number in the book and the catalogue number

  In white guano on the brilliant cranberry binding,

  Concerns galore

  Under both headings, the identical twin numbers.

  Ours, actually, is an “age on ages telling,”

  Once it has become finality. Afterwards,

  It drifts like a stalagmite, advancing

  Pea-brained arguments an inch forward.

  Of course all this has to go on

  Parallel to the hoping, so as to display

  The ancestral linkage, and, more importantly, to drown out

  Any rumors of competing loyalties.

  It is merely a question of avoiding the shadow

  And the starched patch of light,

  At the same time deferring to no sun,

  No shore. No half-naked limit,

  And, in the orange light that the sun succeeds nevertheless

  In shedding all over this terrestrial ball, to avert

  One’s gaze no longer and no less time than is intended

  By the illuminating party to be your account

  Of yourself, here on earth and for all time.

  A grand army of fatality succeeding

  One after the other like a phylloxera

  Never succeeded in erasing intimate

  Knowledge of how long that was supposed to be

  Despite ferocious efforts from age to age the same

  From the minds of those men in which it had been planted

  Originally, and who continued to keep up

  With the changing time and modes while retaining

  With no effort at all,

  As though all were elegy and toccata

  (Which happens to be the case),

  The guidelines. Once given

  They can be forgotten in the sad joy of life,

  Reverence for which is almost incumbent

  On each contestant, and no one, including them,

  Will ever be wider for it. Yet

  Thereby hangs a tale, of starving musicians,

  Strolling players, grasshopper and the ant

  Whose contemptible fireside contrasts so untellingly

  With the barren outdoors. Just to play an instrument,

  It seems, is to have to come round one

  Day to the impossibility of making a living on it,

  To being forced to prostitute oneself, innocently,

  For the greater pleasure which is as the damage

  Succeeding on the small first pleasure.

  And there’s no way out, unless

  The sound of harps is sufficient distraction

  Against the thunder of the fray “for which

  Gog and Magog are said to be continually preparing,

  Or loss of memory (which cannot, by definition,

  Take place) render one oblivious to the traffic

  And all it implies. That loss of memory

  Which is itself a music,

  A kind of music.

  And meanwhile, growing older like leaves that lean back

  Against the trees, is an accomplishment

  Without comfort.

  Back home from the beauty contest

  And its attendant squalors, she doesn’t feel

  Like much. The world

  Is vaguer and less pejorative, a time

  Of stressful headache but also

  Of architectonic inklings and inspiration:

  Agony for a day, and then the refreshing dream

  Bubbles up like an artesian well in all its

  Wealth of accurately observed detail,

  Its truth of being, on the surface

  But striking long, pointed roots into the dull earth

  Behind the mask. Yet like a pain

  That went away, its immanence

  Is very much an ongoing thing, its present

  Departed in the greater interest of the whole.

  A coronet of dark red jewels

  Like winter berries was slowly lowered

  Onto the snow-white curls, and the dream became

  A person, a beautiful princess unable to stand

  Or sit. And the older guests remembered

  How none of it had been predicted, though the mystery word,

  “Magic,” had been imagined

  Many years before. How

  Do we live from the beginning of the tale

  To its inevitable, momentary end, where all

  Its pocket’s treasures are summarily emptied,

  On the mirroring tabletop? And w
ait

  For someone to whisper the word that restores them

  To their velvet hummock, sets all right again?

  Only the cartoon animals know

  How hard it was to get inside the frame, and then

  To make a noise, or eventually to place

  An inky paw-print on the wide, blinding white

  Damask desert as the company was leaving

  In twos and threes. Someone

  Projects a shriek of recognition far up, into the civilized

  But dim world of the farthest chandelier.

  A commercial airliner streaked by. Once again

  The prize will not be awarded.

  The distant plains match up with

  The pictures of them on these transparent walls,

  And that is all. No children

  To relieve the tensions of the adult business,

  No new funny animals, only the vocal abstractions

  Of the solemn, imaginary world of transportation

  And commerce. No one

  Laughs at the brilliant errors any more.

  Yet we who came to know them,

  Castaways of middle life, somehow

  Grew aware through the layers of numbing comfort,

  The eiderdown of materialism and space, how much meaning

  Was there languishing at the roots, and how

  To take some of it home before it melts (as all

  Will, dreams and mica-sparkling sidewalks, clouds

  And office buildings, the conversation

  And the trance, until

  A day when they can do no more, and the mass

  Of the scenery wanders partially

  Over the defunct terrain of broken fences

  And windows stuffed with rags) while the ballad

  Still rings in the seller’s ear.

  In the beginning of speech the question

  Of frontiers is taken up again.

  And the trees and buildings are porous

  And the dome of heaven.

  The talk leads nowhere but is

  Inside its space.

  It is contracting, it is observed ...

  Breath we wanted, to build and lie down

  In slumber at night, under the tattered shade

  Of the trees, open to the rain, rustling of night.

  And the wet, doggy smell,

  The pealing of church bells interspersed with thunder

  And lightning, the distress

  And tiny triumphs of the field.

  Everything is a shaft

  Sunk far too deep into the body, opening landscapes,

  New people, mingling in new conversations,

  Yet distant, as the back of one’s head is distant.

  It all seems like 2½ years ago

  To the impatient sun trapped in the attic

  When all it wants is to be able to write about mathematics and the word,

  For although a few wind-chime notes filter down

  From heaven in the small hours, one cannot help

  But note the frequent fanfare of hoofbeats

  In the wet, empty street.