As We Know

by John Ashbery

  No one said it would turn out this way

  But of course, no one knew, and now most of them

  Are dead.

  One, however, still looms,

  Billboard-size in the picaresque

  Night sky of eleven years ago. And whose

  Hand is it, placed comically against your throat,

  Emerging from a checkered cuff? Because a long time ago

  You were promised safe-conduct

  From a brief, mild agony

  To these not-uninteresting pangs of birth

  And so, and so, a landscape always seen through black lace

  Became this institution

  For you, inflected, as we shall see,

  From time to time by discreet nautical allusions

  And shreds of decor, to amount

  To these handfuls and no other: a reminder

  To keep it soft and straight forever as long

  As no other pick up your ringing phone.

  Play it on any instrument. It is in whack

  And ready to do your bidding, though sunk

  In the rat-infested heap of rose embers

  Of the terminating day. A keepsake.

  This has been a remarkable afternoon:

  The sky turned pitch-black at some point though there

  Was still enough light to see things by.

  Everything looked very festive and elegant

  Against the inky backdrop. But who cares?

  Isn’t it normal for things to happen this way

  During the Silver Age, which ours is?

  Motifs like the presentation of the Silver Rose

  Abound, and no one really pays much attention

  To anything at all. People

  Are either too stunned or too engrossed

  In their own petty pursuits to bother with

  What is happening all around them, even

  When that turns out to be extremely interesting

  As is now so often the case.

  You will see them buying tickets

  To this or that opera, but how many times

  Will they tell you whether they enjoyed it

  Or anything? Sometimes

  I think we are being punished for the overabundance

  Of things to enjoy and appreciate that we have,

  By being rendered less sensitive to them.

  Just one minute of contemporary existence

  Has so much to offer, but who

  Can evaluate it, formulate

  The appropriate apothegm, show us

  In a few well-chosen words of wisdom

  Exactly what is taking place all about us?

  Not critics, certainly, though that is precisely

  What they are supposed to be doing, yet how

  Often have you read any criticism

  Of our society and all the people and things in it

  That really makes sense, to us as human beings?

  I don’t mean that a lot that is clever and intelligent

  Doesn’t get written, both by critics

  And poets and men-of-letters in general

  But exactly whom are you aware of

  Who can describe the exact feel

  And slant of a field in such a way as to

  Make you wish you were in it, or better yet

  To make you realize that you actually are in it

  For better or for worse, with no

  Conceivable way of getting out?

  That is what

  Great poets of the past have done, and a few

  Great critics as well. But today

  Nobody cares or stands for anything,

  Not even the handful of poets one admires, though

  You don’t see them quitting the poetry business,

  Far from it. It behooves

  Our critics to make the poets more aware of

  What they’re doing, so that poets in turn

  Can stand back from their work and be enchanted by it

  And in this way make room for the general public

  To crowd around and be enchanted by it too,

  And then, hopefully, make some sense of their lives,

  Bring order back into the disorderly house

  Of their drab existences. If only

  They could see a little better what was going on

  Then this desirable effect might occur,

  But today’s artists and writers won’t have it,

  That is they don’t see it that way.

  They do see a certain way, and that way

  Is interesting to them, but

  Doesn’t help your average baker or cheerleader

  To see precisely the same way, which

  Is the only thing that could rescue them

  From the desperate, tangled muddle of their

  Frustrated, unsatisfactory living. Seeing things

  In approximately the same way as the writer or artist

  Doesn’t help either, in fact, if anything, it makes things worse

  Because then the other person thinks he

  Or she has found out whatever it is that makes

  Art interesting to them, the reason

  For those diamond tears on the scarlet

  Velvet of the banquette at the opera,

  And goes on a rampage, featuring his or her emotions

  As the banners with a strange device of a new revolution

  Of the senses, but it’s doomed

  To end in failure, unless that person happens to be

  Exactly the same person as the artist who is doing

  All this to them, which of course is impossible,

  Impossible at any rate in a Silver Age

  Wherein a multitude of glittering, interesting

  Things and people attack one

  Like a blizzard at every street crossing

  Yet remain unseen, unknown and undeveloped

  In the electrical climate of sensitivities that ask

  Only for self-gratification,

  Not for outside or part-time help

  In assimilating and enjoying whatever it is.

  Therefore a new school of criticism must be developed.

  First of all, the new

  Criticism should take into account that it is we

  Who made it, and therefore

  Not be too eager to criticize us: we

  Could do that for ourselves, and have done so.

  Nor

  Should it take itself as a fitting subject

  For critical analysis, since it knows

  Itself only through us, and us

  Only through being part of ourselves, the bark

  Of the tree of our intellect. What then

  Shall it criticize, in order to dispel

  The quaint illusions that have been deluding us,

  The pictures, the trouvailles, the sallies

  Swallowed up in the howl? Whose subjects

  Are these? Yet all

  Is by definition subject matter for the new

  Criticism, which is us: to inflect

  It is to count our own ribs, as though Narcissus

  Were born blind, and still daily

  Haunts the mantled pool, and does not know why.

  It’s sad the way they feel about it—

  Poetry—

  As though it could synchronize our lives

  With our feelings about ourselves,

  And form a bridge between them and “life”

  As we come to think about it.

  No one has ever really done a good piece

  On all the things a woman carries inside her pocketbook,

  For instance, and there are other ways

  Of looking out over wide things.

  And yet the sadness is already built into

  The description. Who can begin

  To describe without feeling it?

  So many points of view, so many details

  That are probably significant. And when

  We have finishe
d writing our novel or

  Critical essay, what it does say, no matter

  How good it is, it merely mocks the idea

  Of a whole comprised by all those now mostly invisible

  Ideas, ghosts

  Of things and reasons for them,

  So that it takes over, seizes the glitter

  And luminosity of what ought to have been our

  Creative writing, even though it is dead

  Or was never called to life, and could not be

  Anything living, like what we managed

  Somehow to get down on the page.

  And the afternoon backs off,

  Won’t have anything to do with all of this.

  Yet the writing that doesn’t offend us

  (Keats’ “grasshopper” sonnet for example)

  Soothes and flatters the easier, less excitable

  Parts of our brain in such a way as to set up a

  Living, vibrant turntable of events,

  A few selected ones, that nonetheless have

  Their own veracity and their own way of talking

  Directly into us without any effort so

  That we can ignore what isn’t there—

  The death patterns, swirling ideas like

  Autumn leaves in the teeth of an insane gale,

  And can end up really reminding us

  How big and forceful some of our ideas can be—

  Not giants or titans, but strong, firm

  Human beings with a good sense of humor

  And a grasp of a certain level of reality that

  Is going to be enough—will have to be,

  And so lead us gradually back to words

  With names we had forgotten, old friends from

  Childhood, and then everything

  Is forgiven at last, and we

  Can sit and talk quietly with them for hours,

  Words ourselves, so that when sleep comes

  No one is to blame, and no reproach

  Can finally be uttered as the lamp

  Is trimmed. The tales

  Live now, and we live as part of them,

  Caring for them and for ourselves, warm at last.

  All life

  Is as a tale told to one in a dream

  In tones never totally audible

  Or understandable, and one wakes

  Wishing to hear more, asking

  For more, but one wakes to death, alas,

  Yet one never

  Pays any heed to that, the tale

  Is still so magnificent in the telling

  That it towers far above life, like some magnificent

  Cathedral spire, far above the life

  Pullulating around it (what

  Does it care for that, after all?) and not

  Even aiming at the heavens far above it

  Yet seemingly nearer, just because so

  Vague and. pointless: the spire

  Outdistances these, and the story

  With its telling, which is like gothic

  Architecture seen from a great distance,

  Booms on in such a way

  As to make us forget the prodigious

  Distance of the waking from the

  Thing that was going on, in the novel

  We had been overhearing, all that time.

  Not that writing can transcend life,

  Any more than the act of writing can

  Outdistance the imagination it feeds on and

  Imitates in its ductility, its swift

  Garrulity, jumping from line to line,

  From page to page: it is both

  Too remote and too near to transcend it,

  It is it, probably, and this is what

  We have awakened only to hear: maybe just

  A long list of complaints or someone’s

  Half-formed notions of what they thought

  About something, too greedy

  Even to feed on itself, and therefore

  Lost in the muck

  Of sleep and all that is forever outside,

  Condemned to be told, and never

  To hear of itself.

  Sometimes a pleasant, dimpling

  Stream will seem to flow so slowly all of a

  Sudden that one wonders if it was this

  Rather than the other that one was supposed to read.

  In the charmèd air one

  Imagines one hears waltzes, ländler, and écossaises

  And concludes that it is literature

  That is doing it, and that therefore

  It must do it all the time. It works out too well,

  The ending is too happy

  For it to be life, and therefore it must

  Be the product of some deluded poet’s brain: life

  Could never be this satisfactory, nor indulge

  That truly human passion to be all alone.

  And I too am concerned that it

  Be this way for you. That you

  Get something out of it too.

  Otherwise the night has no end.

  Otherwise the weeping messiah

  Who comforts us on those nights

  When truth has flown out the window

  Would never place an asterisk

  On your heart. Tour whole life

  Would be like walking through a field

  Of tall grasses, in time with the wind

  As it blows. And in old age

  There will have been no jump to the barefaced

  Old man you then are, only a nudge

  And promise of more suppers: some things I have to do.

  How is it that you get from this place

  To that one only a little distance away

  Without anybody’s seeing you do it?

  The trip to the basement

  Performed unseen, unknown ...

  Uncle Fred and his cigars

  All my old Mildred Bailey records

  And a highly intelligent kangaroo

  Riding with me, all of us in the back seat

  In our old Hudson.

  It doesn’t explain much—

  Rituals don’t—

  But as frantic as the commotion in nature

  Now is, the grand impermanence

  Of this storm, impatience

  Of the calm skies to start again,

  The house stays much the same.

  One day a little bit of rust

  At the eaves, a bit of tape removed

  And its story will have been elsewhere,

  Soon removed, like a porch, and the head

  Must again sneeze out an idea of flowers.

  That music, the same old one, will be born again.

  So much for the resident way

  Of adding up the drawbacks and the satisfactions

  If any are to be found, and

  I salute you so as you enjoy

  The mellow fecund death of that past.

  Ah’m impressed. And should we

  Never get together, the deal stands.

  We want it for them and we and us

  More than ever now that it has dwindled

  To a sticky, unsightly root. But now

  The present has dried out in front of the fire

  And we must resume the flight again.

  Someone who likes you first

  Comes along. The act is open

  And a nation of stargazers begins

  To unwrap the fever of forgetting, the while

  You sidle next to each other and never

  Afterward shall it be a question of these blooms

  In that time, of speech heard

  In that apartment. Nowhere that the light comes

  Can you and he argue the subtle hegemony

  Of guilt that loops you together

  In the continual crisis of a rood-screen

  Pierced here and there with old commercials

  Shimmering and shining in the sun.

  You are cast down into the lowest place

  In t
he universe, and you both love it.

  All this time larger and I may say graver

  Destinies were being unfurled on the political front

  And in the marketplace, important issues

  That you are unable and unwilling to understand,

  Though you know you ignore them at your peril,

  That any schoolchild can recite them now.

  Yet somehow it doesn’t bode well that

  In your sophistication you choose to disregard

  What is so heavy with potential tragic consequences

  Hanging above you like a storm cloud

  And cannot know otherwise, even by diving

  Into the shallow stream of your innocence

  And wish not to hear news of

  What brings the world together and sets fire to it.

  It wasn’t innocence even then, but a desire to

  Keep the severe sparkle of childhood for

  The sudden moments of maturity that come

  Surprisingly in the night, dazzling

  By the very singleness of their passage

  Like white blossoming trees glimpsed

  In the May night, before the tempests of summer

  Put an end to all dreams of sailing and hoped-for

  Good weather and luck, before the frosts come

  Like magic garments. And so

  I say unto you: beware the right margin

  Which is unjustified; the left

  Is justified and can take care of itself

  But what is in between expands and flaps

  The end sometimes past the point

  Of conscious inquiry, noodling in the near

  Infinite, off-limits. Therefore

  All your story should be phrased so that

  Tinkers and journeymen may inspect it

  And find it all in place, and pass on

  Or suddenly on a night of profound sleep

  The thudding of a moth’s body will awaken you

  And drag you with it vers la flamme,

  Kicking and screaming. And then

  What might have been written down is seen

  To have been said, and heard, and silence

  Has flowed around the place again and covered it.

  “The morning cometh, and also the night.”

  I’ll dampen you

  As I celebrate you, but first

  I’ll turn your feet over

  And enjoy you with this ever slenderer

  Aspen climate, as one in the know would do.

  I’ll mouth expressions of yours

  And replay your tricycle in the formal walks

  And garden beds. Some very pretty views

  Can be ascertained now. I’ll not

  Put a glove on so you may see the snake

  With the cobalt eyes, and bring you offerings

  Of olives, bananas, guavas, Japanese persimmons. Furthermore,

  I will await you in indolence, so that

  The view of the sea will move in slowly

  And become the walls of this room.

  But it was on this day that