As We Know

by John Ashbery

  The distant treetops with their steeple (so

  Innocent), the stair, the windows’ fixed flashing—

  Pierced full of holes by the evil that is not evil,

  The romance that is not mysterious, the life that is not life,

  A present that is elsewhere.

  And further in the small capitulations

  Of the dance, you rub elbows with it,

  Finger it. That day you did it

  Was the day you had to stop, because the doing

  Involved the whole fabric, there was no other way to appear.

  You slid down on your knees

  For those precious jewels of spring water

  Planted on the moss, before they got soaked up

  And you teetered on the edge of this

  Calm street with its sidewalks, its traffic,

  As though they are coming to get you.

  But there was no one in the noon glare,

  Only birds like secrets to find out about

  And a home to get to, one of these days.

  The light that was shadowed then

  Was seen to be our lives,

  Everything about us that love might wish to examine,

  Then put away for a certain length of time, until

  The whole is to be reviewed, and we turned

  Toward each other, to each other.

  The way we had come was all we could see

  And it crept up on us, embarrassed

  That there is so much to tell now, really now.

  Figures in a Landscape

  What added note, what responsibility

  Do you bring? Inserted around us like birdcalls

  With an insistent fall. But the body

  Builds up a resistance. The signs

  Are no longer construed as they could have been.

  The yellow chevron sails against the blue block

  Of the sky, and is off. It turns tail and disappears.

  Moving through much tepid machinery,

  It makes more sense as it goes along.

  Father and the others will be there

  In their wooden jewelry, under the trees,

  Since it makes sense not to quarrel

  About the hole. You will perhaps see us dancing

  Whom no one could ever figure out until you settled

  At our feet like bushes and in the new glare

  Several of the old features returned.

  Without that we’d shoot back into the hills.

  Statuary

  The prevailing winds lied in intent

  The day she was given up.

  The long cloth cawed from the cough cave:

  First shallow groping outward, thirsty bites, more

  Than heart can bestow.

  You tell me I missed the most interesting part

  But I think I found the most interesting part:

  An unheralded departure by extinguished torchlight

  Whose decorative patina

  Is everything to the group—wind, fire, breathing, snores.

  I was not there I was aware of Yogi Bear

  There where I found a most interesting port

  Crying wares to millennial crossings of voyagers

  But this space is a checkerboard,

  Whether it be land, sea or art

  Trapped in the principle of the great beyond

  Lacking only the expertise to

  “Make a statement.”

  Otherwise

  I’m glad it didn’t offend me

  Not astral rain nor the unsponsored irresponsible musings

  Of the soul where it exists

  To be fed and fussed over

  Are really what this trial is about.

  It is meant to be the beginning

  Yet turns into anthems and bell ropes

  Swaying from landlocked clouds

  Otherwise into memories.

  Which can’t stand still and the progress

  Is permanent like the preordained bulk

  Of the First National Bank

  Like fish sauce, but agreeable.

  Five Pedantic Pieces

  An idea I had and talked about

  Became the things I do.

  The poem of these things takes them apart,

  And I tremble. Sparse winter, less vulnerable

  Than deflated summer, the nests of words.

  Some of the tribes believe the spirit

  Is immanent in a person’s nail parings.

  They gather up their dead swiftly,

  At sundown. And this will be

  Some forgotten day three years ago:

  Startling evidence of light after death.

  Another person. The yellow-brick and masonry

  Wall, deeper, duller all afternoon

  And a voice waltzing, fabricating works

  Of sentimental gadgetry—messes he’d cook up.

  And the little hotel looked all right

  And well lit, in the dark, on the flat

  Beach behind the breakers, stiff, harmless.

  And you are amazed that so much flimsy stuff

  Stays erect, trapped in our mummery.

  Flowering Death

  Ahead, starting from the far north, it wanders.

  Its radish-strong gasoline fumes have probably been

  Locked into your sinuses while you were away.

  You will have to deliver it.

  The flowers exist on the edge of breath, loose,

  Having been laid there.

  One gives pause to the other,

  Or there will be a symmetry about their movements

  Through which each is also an individual.

  It is their collective blankness, however,

  That betrays the notion of a thing not to be destroyed.

  In this, how many facts we have fallen through

  And still the old façade glimmers there,

  A mirage, but permanent. We must first trick the idea

  Into being, then dismantle it,

  Scattering the pieces on the wind,

  So that the old joy, modest as cake, as wine and friendship,

  Will stay with us at the last, backed by the night

  Whose ruse gave it our final meaning.

  Haunted Landscape

  Something brought them here. It was an outcropping of peace

  In the blurred afternoon slope on which so many picnickers

  Had left no trace. The hikers then always passed through

  And greeted you silently. And down in one corner

  Where the sweet william grew and a few other cheap plants

  The rhythm became strained, extenuated, as it petered out

  Among pots and watering cans and a trowel. There were no

  People now but everywhere signs of their recent audible passage.

  She had preferred to sidle through the cane and he

  To hoe the land in the hope that some day they would grow happy

  Contemplating the result: so much fruitfulness. A legend.

  He came now in the certainty of her braided greeting,

  Sunlight and shadow, and a great sense of what had been cast off

  Along the way, to arrive in this notch. Why were the insiders

  Secretly amused at their putting up handbills at night?

  By day hardly anyone came by and saw them.

  They were thinking, too, that this was the right way to begin

  A farm that would later have to be uprooted to make way

  For the new plains and mountains that would follow after

  To be extinguished in turn as the ocean takes over

  Where the glacier leaves off and in the thundering of surf

  And rock, something, some note or other, gets lost,

  And we have this to look back on, not much, but a sign

  Of the petty ordering of our days as it was created and led us

  By the nose through itself, and now it has happened

  And we have it to l
ook at, and have to look at it

  For the good it now possesses which has shrunk from the

  Outline surrounding it to a little heap or handful near the center.

  Others call this old age or stupidity, and we, living

  In that commodity, know how only it can enchant the dear soul

  Building up dreams through the night that are cast down

  At the end with a graceful roar, like chimes swaying out over

  The phantom village. It is our best chance of passing

  Unnoticed into the dream and all that the outside said about it,

  Carrying all that back to the source of so much that was precious.

  At one of the later performances you asked why they called it a “miracle,”

  Since nothing ever happened. That, of course, was the miracle,

  But you wanted to know why so much action took on so much life

  And still managed to remain itself, aloof, smiling and courteous.

  Is that the way life is supposed to happen? We’ll probably never know

  Until its cover turns into us: the eglantine for duress

  And long relativity, until it becomes a touch of red under the bridge

  At fixed night, and the cries of the wind are viewed as happy, salient.

  How could that picture come crashing off the wall when no one was in the room?

  At least the glass isn’t broken. I like the way the stars

  Are painted in this one, and those which are painted out.

  The door is opening. A man you have never seen enters the room.

  He tells you that it is time to go, but that you may stay,

  If you wish. You reply that it is one and the same to you.

  It was only later, after the house had materialized elsewhere,

  That you remembered you forgot to ask him what form the change would take.

  But it is probably better that way. Now time and the land are identical,

  Linked forever.

  My Erotic Double

  He says he doesn’t feel like working today.

  It’s just as well. Here in the shade

  Behind the house, protected from street noises,

  One can go over all kinds of old feeling,

  Throw some away, keep others.

  The wordplay

  Between us gets very intense when there are

  Fewer feelings around to confuse things.

  Another go-round? No, but the last things

  You always find to say are charming, and rescue me

  Before the night does. We are afloat

  On our dreams as on a barge made of ice,

  Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight

  That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams

  As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it.

  I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.

  Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.

  Thank you. You are too.

  I Might Have Seen It

  The person who makes a long-distance phone call

  Is talking into the open receiver at the other end

  The mysterious discourse also emerges as pointed

  In his ear there are no people in the room listening

  As the curtain bells out majestically in front of the starlight

  To whisper the words This has already happened

  And the footfalls on the stair turn out to be real

  Those of your neighbor I mean the one who moved away

  The Hills and Shadows of a New Adventure

  Even the most finicky would find

  Some way to stand in the way.

  He looked down at the ledge,

  Grappling with more serious, better times.

  A lady’s leg crossed his mind.

  Far out at sea the gulls shifted like weights.

  This freshness was only a chore. In other words

  The screen of lights is always there, calling

  A name of vowels and then there is silence,

  A burnt-out moon, our old Franklin

  Parked in the yard

  Under the final shade.

  If there was a way to separate these objects

  We feel, from these lived eventualities

  That torment our best intentions

  With a vision of a man bent over his desk,

  Writing, communicating with the pad

  Which becomes dream velvet the next time,

  A moonlit city in which minorities

  Fluctuate, drawing out the cultural medium

  As fine as floating threads of cobwebs

  Around the one ambiguous space:

  Its own discoverer and name,

  Named after itself,

  Which is its name, and all these go into cities

  Like ships behind a sea wall.

  You cannot know them

  Yet they are a part of you, the cold reason part

  You do know about.

  You were not present at the beginning

  But this is not so difficult to figure out:

  Messengers crying your name

  In the streets of all the principal cities.

  Morning. An old tractor.

  It seems strange that there is no name for these

  And that the night passages now seem so clear

  Where you thought were only telephone wires

  And the birds of strange rented buildings

  In a place close to the north yet not north

  With a strong smell of burlap,

  A place to wait for, not in.

  Knocking Around

  I really thought that drinking here would

  Start a new chain, that the soft storms

  Would abate, and the horror stories, the

  Noises men make to frighten themselves,

  Rest secure on the lip of a canyon as day

  Died away, and they would still be there the next morning.

  Nothing is very simple.

  You must remember that certain things die out for awhile

  So that they can be remembered with affection

  Later on and become holy. Look at Art Deco

  For instance or the “tulip mania” of Holland:

  Both things we know about and recall

  With a certain finesse as though they were responsible

  For part of life. And we congratulate them.

  Each day as the sun wends its way

  Into your small living room and stays

  You remember the accident of night as though it were a friend.

  All that is forgotten now. There are no

  Hard feelings, and it doesn’t matter that it will soon

  Come again. You know what I mean. We are wrapped in

  What seems like a positive, conscious choice, like a bird

  In air. It doesn’t matter that the peonies are tipped in soot

  Or that a man will come to station himself each night

  Outside your house, and leave shortly before dawn,

  That nobody answers when you pick up the phone.

  You have all lived through lots of these things before

  And know that life is like an ocean: sometimes the tide is out

  And sometimes it’s in, but it’s always the same body of water

  Even though it looks different, and

  It makes the things on the shore look different.

  They depend on each other like the snow and the snowplow.

  It’s only after realizing this for a long time

  That you can make a chain of events like days

  That more and more rapidly come to punch their own number

  Out of the calendar, draining it. By that time

  Space will be a jar with no lid, and you can live

  Any way you like out on those vague terraces,

  Verandas, walkways—the forms of space combined with time

  We are allowed, and we live them passionately,

&n
bsp; Fortunately, though we can never be described

  And would make lousy characters in a novel.

  Not Only / But Also

  Having transferred the one to the other

  And living on the plain of insistent self-knowledge

  Just outside the great city, I see many

  Who come and go, and being myself involved in distant places

  Ask how they adjust to

  The light that rains on the traveler’s back

  And pushes out before him. It is always “the journey,”

  And we are never sure if these are preparations

  Or a welcome back to the old circle of stone posts

  That was there before the first invention

  And now seems a place of vines and muted shimmers

  And sighing at noon

  As opposed to

  The terrain of stars, the robe

  Of only that journey. You adjusted to all that

  Over a long period of years. When we next set out

  I had spent years in your company

  And was now turning back, half amused, half afraid,

  Having in any case left something important back home

  Which I could not continue without,

  An invention so simple I could never figure out

  How they spent so many ages without discovering it.

  I would have found it, altered it

  To be my shape, probably in my own lifetime,

  In a decade, in just a few years.

  Train Rising Out of the Sea

  It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes

  That all things have their center in their dying,

  That each is discrete and diaphanous and

  Has pointed its prow away from the sand for the next trillion years.

  After that we may be friends,

  Recognizing in each other the precedents that make us truly social.

  Do you hear the wind? It’s not dying,

  It’s singing, weaving a song about the president saluting the trust,

  The past in each of us, until so much memory becomes an institution,

  Through sheer weight, the persistence of it, no,

  Not the persistence: that makes it seem a deliberate act

  Of duration, much too deliberate for this ingenuous being,

  Like an era that refuses to come to an end or be born again.

  We need more night for the sky, more blue for the daylight

  That inundates our remarks before we can make them