by John Ashbery
time is running out. While still all things to all people we
are no longer swimming in the pool left by the sunrise. No,
a forest has resumed the strict narration. One puts gloves on
to ward off something. What is it? And living by a chair
so close to a thermometer no one can count is business,
that is, it can’t be put aside, and coming out to your guests,
to warn them, is the recreational side we love, that, and all
things, all producers of silence that let this hay
into the tunnel and came out the far side of sleep. Really,
your life is so fascinating. I don’t get it. Neither do I—
I mean I was originally the fencing instructor here.
Now my head gets buried in the flour
of reading this translucent page as a vacuum mounts,
and so off to bed. Really it’s too bad, though not calculated,
and can never be—Everests of tiny snow crystals would
have to be accounted for first, and that’s not likely.
Meanwhile we live in the paperweight of swirling blizzards
and little toy buses painted vermilion like the sky
when it rises up reasonably to our defense in the half-hour
after sunrise or before sunset and likes to, it likes
the idea of museums. Then so much of us is fetched away.
Often you think you can see or even smell some part of it
before it too is put away, used and put away. But then these
so recent nights would be part of the elaborate past, that old
contraption, the one we were never sure about—
It is lively still, playing to packed houses.
What must the present-day analysts think, the ones who husk it
for what that’s worth, then come to play games with us
as a consequence of their own dangerous behavior.
It was night over a mountain that seemed to be there, readily
and so useful we threw ourselves on the ground dank with animal
emotions and choked-out expletives: December first! The cocksucker
hasn’t been around lately we see through gaps in the dead
or is it dormant vegetation. One of us has to go the whole way now:
shall we draw straws? Don’t be ridiculous but don’t look
either in the direction of the walrus, the caves of the sea
hold us, though we appear to you here on this simple street
asking so little. The third time it happened I thought I was seeing
it in a new light. Then the follow-up call came. Did I want it
delivered with the sheaves of my imagination, those other ones,
and if so what would I do with these lesions marking the enchanter’s
space if he is off somewhere, bold song
if ever I sang one? Though this night I shall untune
the most insistent, entrenched breaths of purpose just so I can say you
can come to me, an attack like those told of in time to
an insane purpose that is what we call history; then it will be no nearer
to a resolution, by God; I have to cry out if this mess is what is
left at my doorstep. In the future we’ll
have no time for backbiting conversations like this one.
Differences will be put aside. Aye, and rainbows too, slugs
of narrative even the best of us could follow to what ends
in wild weeds, here at the wind. An’ if my daughter
bring it over to you there’ll be no less use for a mouse
found in your castle and turned out into blind day, the passion
some think comes at night. And we’re all over you.
Suddenly it was my time. I don’t know whither the watchman
vanished. He told us of the night, then vanished.
The stars are purring in the little Mississippi runoff of the
pure, bulging sky. Ours to consider, no doubt. And what if when we pay
it off, in full, it still runs toward us, too badgered to think
to mention what other tales might have been in store, only the last men
took them away. These were never seen again. My toothache is subsiding
but I won’t I guess be the ultimate one, the who-by-definition-saves
what one is after, cornflower that obliges us by never appearing
in the sole instant it is wanted, but is somewhere behind that house,
no, that other one. Besides, when in doubt you can strike a match.
SEASONAL
What does the lengthening season mean,
the halo round a single note?
Blunt words projected on a screen
are what we mean, not what we wrote.
The halo round a single note
makes one look up. The careful blows
are what we mean, not what we wrote.
And what a lying writer knows
makes one look up. The careful blows
unclench a long-sought definition.
And what a lying writer knows
is pleasure, hallowed by attrition.
Unclench a long-sought definition:
what does the lengthening season mean?
Is pleasure hallowed by attrition
blunt words projected on a screen?
KAMARINSKAYA
And it was uniquely the weather, O bombes-glaceés university!
Had they actually built something there?
It was whose turn to find out.
Tremendous lashings of cloud were pouring in, from over there, they said.
Mouths choked with news, though no news in particular,
blocked the corridor. Later aspects were discovered,
developed, and as always, they fanned out in twos and threes
or stood a little to one side to discuss whatever was being discussed.
The great moment paradigm had arrived for all of us.
Some of us reaped instant benefits. That very afternoon
we were five looking at the sea; the shore began its pitiless interrogation
and we were glad of the cleft that produced nothing and knowledge,
the freedom to wait.
The dentist moon hovered by the wire: Sure,
look in thy heart and write. But don’t throw foreign articles.
And after coming down from the plateau, the heights, we are amazed
at the power of the possibilities enfolded in each thing, but above all how long
they have lasted—longer than consciousness itself. We can go on building
and the structure, the shed that joins ours, will always be there,
kind, undermining. And the strength to be indeterminate
overtakes one. There are always laws, and people to break them; that’s not the point.
What is is the majestic lineage that is merely nerve endings of the air, plus spice.
It’s not often we get to point to something this way, saying:
“It must be daring or I would not have done it,
not consciously; in my sleep perhaps. And yet there are tables near mine,
close enough to overhear, and all he says is Daddy brought you,
we must make it up. Make up anything you like. Steal it
from a magazine, no one will know the difference. Use its resonance
and throw the rest away, down the steep ravine into the dump.
That way the menace is erased. And the waitress asked sweetly
if there was anything else I would be needing and I said Swell,
it’s the unpinning, the unrolling of the linoleum so soon, and I
who had dwelt in realm of fancy it was I who was coming too.
There was approval all around me
and a costly lamp-base where the seconds melted and in a
gash too deep for sleep I had plotted it already, I was being
told;
the light and the fences had said it. I was being rushed from leaves to tall grass
not knowing whether I had made it or whether the others had, sure only of
one piece of information in the instant harbor: the one true way
to make a book and get out alive. Surely,
the bourbon sours have stopped; now will be the declaration
of the rest of the stairway, and then we’ll see.
And it’s true then a locomotive may pass through like an elephant and no
one raise their eyes. The time is past, she said.
But even this wan swan song looks like news to me—
there are so many others out and getting—
and whatever happens will be red and gold like a fire engine.
Now he said that she said that he didn’t know where they put it
and she said that he said that the law was over soon, that in the interim of the land
not one of us was going to cry, but many, besides we’d see
what a disaster looked like, with the moon back there and people’s lack
of attention.” Then he got right out and said so. Did it. But the sheriff
and his men were there. Did that mean—? But a woman read the riot act.
Now all was song, and cleaving
to the spar, that precious one, thing
that always turns up, radiant, one for the books, you must tell
them about this, really. Did that mean we had been let out?
Listen, the password is like downtown, no peace
prohibited, we can get where we want now
and can’t get to but the steep ride
is safe. What do you want with me anymore? True.
ELEPHANT VISITORS
Sweet young thing: “why are you all down in the mouth?”
Testy Gent: “We’re all in the business of getting older,
or so it seems; we’re moving on. The daytime approach
can fail you. Sit on this moment,
pause on this deck. What if the earth fell on you?
But the dirty salad of lies, etc., about assassination
is approaching. Something has not been found.”
Here, try the gloom in this room.
I think you’ll find it more comfortable
now that the assassins have gone away.
Or got away. Take a week and shut off the engines.
But we do have to manage to stay here in the mountains, or at least
hover, in place. There are things I still haven’t told you.
What is the state flower of Nova Scotia?
On whom do we depend
when we twist downward tangled in the parachute
and the ground is coming to greet us too quickly?
That’s when you could use a newspaper,
but try and find one in the prairie. I was muffled
by the elegance of it all
but now I’ll take one step if only to save myself,
yes, and others. Doctors
never tell you why these four-footed quadrupeds are friends,
if only foul-weather ones. There’s a lot in envelopes,
and in a hole behind the house,
but if we think we’re better in this instance,
give them something they WANT. Tasseled trees.
Until which time we sign off—wait, the lotus
wants to say something: it’s MADE IN JAPAN.
THE GREAT BRIDGE GAME OF LIFE
What with one thing and another they were all
too complicated. I was seen leaving.
Good grief, a frog. How funny that piece
of scaffolding flits against
yon crimson cloud, to their mutual betterment, actually.
Try saying that aloud. A nice military
mood and then where in the walk
I was mistaken and that took again.
We all fell over our numbers, if seeing
is to believing as the flat wave is on the stair.
No, scars. You forgot to pack
some. The world will live
without them and we must scurry to dream up
some other identical crisis. First it’s men and
then it’s me, that stayed nights
in a box, sometimes. Sometimes we were up and
sometimes we were down. It takes one of us to
reposition us and by that time danger has worn the day
down to its nub. It’s best not to be
here. But if we linger after waters and cents
nothing is then too obtuse for the clime, the time
and all we travelled backward for: one good image,
the rest fenced off.
Do you think you’re better for
all that clashing? The seesaw on the roof
in Zagreb disappeared, part of it.
There were no tonsils, no noodles in the paper that day.
One tries to keep oh so many
foreign things in mind but as mustard
seeps from a diary, the elegance had gone out of life.
Now there was nothing to repair.
THE DEPARTED LUSTRE
Oh I am oh so
oh so
Something is slightly wrong here,
a summer cold.
but I don’t know what they’re up to whether they’re up to something
else because
We made it fit years ago
made it fit in
an archetypal fit
and when it didn’t go on
when it took root
the ship was obliged to leave for the islands—it doesn’t matter which ones.
Where it’s always too hot
and the spoons are slightly bent
and someone, always some other one, saves the day
though hell-bent for the lilacs,
heedless of the volcano’s warning belch
yes, and the fires are put away for that day.
Yes, like a fish I enjoy swimming lessons.
Out into the cold with us, we have mastered all that the senses
can teach us now. Only our naked intelligence
stands somewhat apart
bowed under the bowing tree.
Such speed in the letter now—
how the pen races over words, underscoring
its happiness, and all the dots and curlicues
arise under a single heaven!
It means more to me than to it
and I am lightened by the passing cry of crows
blotted like jam in the sunsets
they have here,
as the swinging touch of the earth
deepens, leads to much
and the aurora stands tall on the nimbus
of what imaginable October could be
and the mucus of mountains hardens
each day, to my surprise. Erections
surprise us in gardens.
When the fatal beauty-sleep takes over
darkness imprisons the advocates who had the key,
showed it to you, pressed it into your hand
but it was like a dream you said
it could never outlast its moment so here
we are on the ground
and a child brings you another key
whiter than the last one
to unlock pinions, positions, bookcases
where the voice can dwell unsinging
There is so much to praise,
to hate,
one is grateful for the patterns,
the obscure, plain faces,
The capital “T” in “The.”
VILLANELLE
As it unfolded and took on something of the aspect
of a garden in the rain, the acclaim with which others
greeted it scattered too, evaporated. Now who
is to say when battered night comes and you look
distractedly over your shoulder, whether the owners
of that night had the right to remove any of it
in strips and mask-shaped pieces, so that by morning
nothing of it remained except crescent
accents under cups? And they were seen as truly gone,
arch-fiends of emptiness, that it stayed
to lighten awhile? What if I told you that every
aspect of the cause had been pre-ordained, from
the brokers in wind-cheaters to the tumescent
ear of corn in its shock, and that no one, not one radio,
had ever been accused of inattentiveness to the
gradual unravelling of the scene?
This would have mattered bleakly to those, the growers,
who stay behind and amid bats and laburnum devise acrostic
governors whose motives shall be colorless and whose device,
strangely scrolled across a banner, translates
easily into Urdu as: “Let’s put the boys’ fire out.”
No, there were sad others too, but let’s hear it
in the rain-bejewelled jungle gym for the copers, the
coppers-out whose ears, the brass color of tubas, flare insanely
just a little as each new podium prank thunks
into place, like a hive of bees, questioning, unsure if the date
was last year’s. And if so, deliver them a warning:
mornings are timely, sure no feet drag, and yet a weariness
as of a wolf’s blasts the moment into shards. We were as good
as in bed, and all
we really wanted to know was the time on the other fellow’s watch.
How hard he made it, and into what twosomes the grisly smile
delivered hands, prom-dates, catches in throats, the horrible
manliness for which time is an ascending ramp crowned by moonglow
made of hundreds of cigarette ends, and the return
to town is witchy, twin scotties on a leash.
How fast the others collected! Were we to be siphoned off
as casually as last year, pinned with a string? We who
were well off until a certain day, and now, loitering, the starlet
shakes her beads in contempt: no we had not even begun to
understand where the crime is, to what
succinctness of being we are summoned if it ever goes away!
The threads, at the back, seem to match an image our fathers
dribbled, but reversed, the image is Main Street,
Titusville, and there is no other home than these
pebbles, placid and revered. There are ghosts on the trail,