Chinese Whispers: Poems

by John Ashbery

  She has forgotten her pearls. The orchestra riffs around,

  they come back. “Well, I never! Of all things!”

  Oh, it plays

  to the breach. You see it. Her lover and best friend came

  along the hall. “I’m sorry, Dan.

  But I just couldn’t.” So it’s all alright,

  he thinks. He thinks it’s a secret.

  MOON, MOON

  The winter voice adjusts: “As I was saying

  (before I was so rudely interrupted),

  we don’t have to go downstairs and get the plants.

  Some of them, at least, are already here.”

  More innocent people, gnawed by pests.

  Death agreed to lie low for a while.

  Nobody was very grateful. “After all,

  if it hadn’t been for him the anteaters

  might have noticed us. Now potstickers take up

  the cry: ‘It was great to have you in that glen!’”

  Out on the ice children are being sick

  as grown men whirl round and round

  the devil in coattails. “He had a passion for straw marquetry.

  Other than that, little is known

  of him or of his descendants.”

  In the valley of the school all is well anew.

  “I told you all would be well

  on a certain day.” That rivulets

  would course past their snowy banks, singing the song of

  a sudden thaw in January.

  “Each of us checked out the others,

  got down to work.” His disguise worked,

  he made it through the breadline with blue

  Etruscan flowers in his galvanized wrists:

  “It is time for the debit to begin,

  the rush of evening.” “No one likes being abandoned

  on a rapidly disintegrating floe, and dawn coming.”

  He stood just outside.

  We were the undeserving ones now, though his warmth

  cradles us,

  as the road becomes a kiss.

  SYLLABUS

  Look,

  the savage glitter of downtown,

  those walls of glycerin

  inspissated by tears—

  yes, and why does the smell not go away?

  Honey, it’s been ages, take off your hat and coat,

  rest your feet awhile? Now, where were we?

  Wave upon wave of new construction

  (some of it shoddy), then that too plowed under

  as new waves bare their teeth—

  where’s it gotten us? I say, you

  look a little disheveled—want to freshen up?

  Play doctor? Uh, I’ll be with you

  in a moment. Yes, the doctor is in,

  yuk yuk. Now, what was it we were learning to say?

  “Change the value systems. All incandescence and fear

  have their origin there. In not nice night

  one must strip down silently, and quickly.

  See, a little headway has been made.”

  The snow shovel’s disclaimer

  defused the situation. Soon the host was ruddy

  with his own reflected good cheer.

  And it was again time to creep back a ways,

  to rest, sheltered by soffits,

  and pronounce one’s own alphabet, nasally and distinctly, backwards

  like it was supposed to be all along. We’d arrived

  again, it seemed, though we only came along for the ride.

  ON HIS RELUCTANCE TO TAKE DOWN THE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS

  A nice, normal morning:

  feet setting out as though in a trance,

  doubling the yesterdays, a doubled man

  under the stairs, and strange surrealist fish

  from so much disappearance, damaged in the mail.

  Or the spry cutting edge of another day.

  Here, we have these in

  sizes and colors—

  day goes fluttering by.

  Like ivy behind a chimney

  it grows and grows in ropes.

  Mouse teams unslay it,

  yeomen can’t hear yet.

  A shadow purling,

  up into the sky.

  Silence in the vandalized vomitorium.

  It’s great that you can be here too.

  Passivity rests its case.

  THE BUSINESS OF FALLING ASLEEP

  Set this down too:

  That one who was cognizant

  (belief in one to three things)

  turned at last to the roulette table

  and gasped her last—or else, why not let the building sleep

  while it collapses, spineless. In a second

  the faith that was as large as my life was split,

  edge to edge—

  And tell them this:

  If it was for nothing that I aged in a dawdle

  beside a slow-knocking stream

  out from under the reader,

  why am I being criticized?

  Do you react to fine breath of the anvil

  in a cold room?

  More, then, another time—but we will have to

  fit note to note,

  unclenchingly

  going over more territory until it all rises

  smooth from the gulf,

  a pure provocation,

  arc of seamless energy.

  The wall-bearing fragments move on over

  the main chancel.

  All the tesserae fly apart.

  Bracts are fresh and new.

  In the main parlor the governor

  seated around his table, smilingly assented

  to whatever assignment was raised.

  Pawky, canny—not one of your average sterns

  fitted against the exodus

  out of old harbors and disks in chains—

  Say they came to see you,

  now is calm, and whatever remaining communicants leased your

  indoor policy.

  Amazing, to amaze,

  falling light over and in on its own imperfect

  sense of the appropriate,

  the main argument emerges:

  how to be understand please, not with

  a harpsichord at one’s traces—

  the dreams only pool off again, that way.

  Other firm magnets enticed

  girls out in summer night

  where a pale loggia echoed. The neighbors fell silent,

  or it was not a day in which to have elicited model policy demeanors.

  HINTS AND FRAGMENTS

  The arty set adheres

  to the stolen pavement. Inside

  are sherbets and “Barbara.”

  Strange, how one day

  you’ll come over “all queer,”

  then next day we’re scrambling to stamp it out.

  Such are our inspirations:

  of unequal value, one chasing the better

  ones until he stops, forgetting. That’s

  the time I like best, cold color of cistern.

  Values show up in the neighborhood house;

  next day it’s moved on.

  In the Pennsylvania of my youth, tungsten filaments

  daubed hoardings ludicrous shades, one after another.

  The crowds have bicycled far out to see you fail.

  Don’t disappoint them.

  Three on a match he said

  is how it all began. Seven years’ bad luck

  and after that, roseate perspectives garlanded

  with octaves of blooms. Keeping next to her

  and the door closes, kindly.

  All that’s behind us, or

  so we used to say.

  Kettle’s on the hob, ghost dancers

  are fierce tonight. Yet it collects

  in the hollow of my palm, somehow,

  tears in an appetizing equation.

  Door is shut,

  but hasn’t been locked yet.
<
br />   We owe this to our childhood dogs,

  sprig of hope. Where clarity once ruled

  dreams are still active,

  a clarinet floats ashore,

  a good time was had by all.

  IF YOU ASK ME

  The whole is stasis between ends. Probability’s dark inching, sundered, disclaimer. Time for the space hut to close. Petal on a chain.

  Thus it was the laborious leopard pirated more than one freedom hymn. Kettle boils, not urgent.

  Privately there were interviews the sun of the sea drowned. In that chair. Over there.

  When I last got a message from him I was too ill to see, into the hole, an enchantment. Privately, then a scale. Turnips aboard, the sport tank is partially invaded by flying fish. One youth seriously injured, two more in critical but stable condition.

  I see. It flies down to that. Why couldn’t you have asked, then advised me? Now wherever I go it’ll always be a tiny tricycle behind me, stifled prunes, prurience of a moment seen through the loupe. Best to cash everything in, a train approaches on the narrowing rails, veering sideways. An untidy philosopher tosses it aside like bones. Then the water rose slightly,

  underground. Dare I say the water table? There will be no élan, as in a peach, miles away, stiffening. You can say it how you like it. Screws up in no time. The Dixie Adder is programmed livid. It likes to stop. You too. You too in canvas bearing supple testimony away, do the lanterns recognize terror in our faces, condition of gone, perhaps further, more than you know. I gave him what there was to give. At the end it was invisible. It was a lot.

  THE HAVES

  Many there were that.

  There were many who that.

  Many did that to what.

  Many undid that to what.

  Many there were worse than that.

  To undo that many did that.

  More of an obstacle to this than that

  where the upcoming is done to that.

  The undone is done is that.

  They are speaking to what is done

  not left on the stove.

  The done is that to that done.

  There were many who did this and that,

  meanwhile were many who undid that.

  The undone undid the that.

  The crisis under the batter’s hat.

  Do you manage a common if?

  If so why is the crisis that?

  Who did the crisis there?

  Why is the crisis after my time that.

  Ordinarily men go around

  seeking wedgies the corner is out.

  They this and why and in this bat

  an eyelash to be better than that

  on the day that.

  And that was all a better than that day had that

  unto the jousting which was unto a way down that.

  They mortared the way under the man hat

  that wanted to under a bill be that that.

  In London just now is cold.

  In London just now a gull spring

  in London on the back of the bat

  in London on the back of that.

  When they and London remove the bat back

  the bat backer became the bat back.

  The butt packer begat the back pack

  under lest the noise disturb those that bat back.

  In the backing the true bat resides

  under a cleft the cliff nose

  gannets nosed underside.

  The cliff-size size briar sizes up size,

  decides size is lies under briar thighs.

  That was a lot of that and lack

  come down the stair decorum

  and lack of reasonable store bin

  under the store the straw was been.

  Me like methink it all past being

  and beyond into the been that he sinned,

  the being that has seen

  under the hedgerow greens as feline

  is opposed to oppressed being been

  and never two of us no no more we’ll have been.

  The barn exploded.

  The big store ripped apart.

  Gravel on the lawn made its mark

  yes that and festoon of grit in the sky

  while the riders came riding by

  and nobody was appointed to fill the exam

  no others why no other have ever been

  why the irritated sky

  and we’ll never be the fly

  not two slates ever to fly by

  and no more store no more in store by the fly

  they fly by and take just as your daddy did

  and stand by the chest

  just make sure to be to the thigh

  came crawling across clock’s tempest.

  LIKE AIR, ALMOST

  It comes down to

  so little:

  the gauzy syntax

  of one thing and another;

  a pleasant dinner

  and a frozen train ride into the exhaustible

  resources.

  We’d had almost enough,

  tossing the cap to first one

  and then the other one,

  but still weren’t determined

  to give up the drive.

  It had so much we wanted!

  But besides that, was

  fickle, overdetermined.

  So I passed on that.

  It was worth it.

  Angelic eventide came along after afternoon,

  a colibri fluttered questioning wings,

  all so we might be taken out,

  aired.

  And when the post-climax happened

  in soft shards, falling

  this way and that,

  signing the night’s emeralds away,

  we took it to be a sign of something.

  “Must be a sign of something.”

  Then the wind came on, and winter with it.

  “Why, weren’t we just here,

  five minutes ago?”

  I thought I’d have another look,

  but that way is all changed, and besides,

  no one goes there anymore,

  it’s too popular.

  Just one fragment

  is all I ever wanted,

  but I can have it, it’s too much,

  but its touch is for another time,

  when I’m ready.

  Crowd ebbs peacefully.

  Hey it’s all right.

  THE BLESSED WAY OUT

  Those who came closest did not come close.

  The unknown leaned out to them,

  then it was post-afternoon. Yes, Jerry built it.

  There are many of them in Old Town.

  What with one thing and another

  you gave me all sorts of fur presents, you know.

  It was good to come back. Gumball machines furnish

  the library’s stark living style.

  You can’t compete with what the

  car tells its owner. One by one you are mortal

  if the watershed idea catches on

  and if we are credited for our utterance.

  They thought serendipity was the most beautiful thing in the world.

  They were right. As the wheel takes hold,

  other inspirations spike it.

  There was no year like it for taxation.

  FDR decreed a large public works program

  that had to be supported with funds from somewhere.

  Inevitably, these took the form of taxation.

  As when a redbreast calls, there is someone to hear it.

  Calico got pasted over the mouse hole.

  What are we doing in a theater more than one

  wondered. Leaves fled like falling stocks.

  SIGHT TO BEHOLD

  The album sinks through fog, its unclasped pages

  oozing afterthoughts: “If he weren’t such a sacrificial lamb

  we’d have been delivered sooner. As it is, he grasps at straws

  or fluff to kee
p his conscience afloat, which, in any case, seethes

  in the authorial chant of bees.”

  Don’t make him jump through hoops, I heard another one say

  of me. Hey, I was just getting down to business.

  A cab appeared at the door, as though summoned.

  That it gave me quite a turn I don’t have to tell you.

  You know you’ve arrived at bedlam when the arc lights

  expire. Alternate-side-of-the-street parking has been suspended,

  as has parking. Other than dishpan hands

  I have naught to fondle you with. The memory eddies,

  sinks, bobs up again, is carried away for good. Now,

  what was I telling you? You’re telling me. And beyond that point

  of darkness, good citizens don’t go. It’s implanted

  in their genes, to flower along the way. And a good job

  it’s not, old sod.

  Like Knights Templar, we took our time, making sure

  we were getting there. Sooner or later the proof dissolves

  in the pudding. Made to look inconvenient, we had our say

  again, and it was all profit and loss; the streets

  had nowhere to go. We lived like nabobs, piling excess

  on excess, till one fine day there was nothing left to wake up to.

  I suppose it’s for that we’re being punished,

  only this punishment is more like a thrill,

  the slow beginning of a roller-coaster ride.

  Be admonished then, but don’t take

  it too much to heart either. Their records need you and your kind.

  PRISONER’S BASE

  It might have made

  Cindy’s testimony

  less credible,

  and now seems at low ebb.

  It may be just cold enough now.

  Stars may have become polluted.