by John Ashbery
doffing those earmuffs. Besides it’s not cold enough
to be wearing them. Amazed
people will look at you like you’re crazed.
Now, all I wanted was to be back at the table
in my little laboratory, observing water spots on a plate,
trying to tune the old crystal set
to KDKA.
Here the weather is tethered to no air.
The eyes in the head in the house
look out over a spotty landscape of bilious green chest hair.
I believe I am the Man from Nowhere. I’m expected.
The taxi karma circled the pebbled drive and departed
through the great iron gates, which clanged shut.
You see I have to stay here. I am expected.
Yes well we’ll pursue that over cocktails
and lunch.
They were destined to meet one more time.
briefly. Is that a hand on my sleeve …
The Waiting Ceremony
The binding clause—
It concerns us,
behooves us to behoove it.
Yet I’m so far away
(I’m not far away) …
Eighty-eight keys on a piano—
how do they know that?
I mean, know that? Oh, sure,
I know how they know it.
Excuse me for living.
Once in a while
the fun gets taken out
of what wasn’t supposed to be fun.
That’s the boiling point, what
they mean by one.
I get a stiff neck watching.
But then it seems old cereals (or serials)
are the part-time joke—like this rubber of bridge,
with all the bridges receding into the distance, brought
to their time of rightness. I would stress
the very white side of a house. Go on,
give it away, give it to a child
or some tax-free person.
(Nothing bumptious about that.)
We hold all the ends
of the story, like the four corners of a sheet,
resuming and resuming. We are the thick.
And the thin.
The Walkways
To know how to walk in the night, to have
a goal, to reach it in the darkness, the shadows.
—JOUBERT
The man behind you spoke to the tracery
as it killed him. The witches’ envoy
brought a tusk to the guest of honor.
It was covered with vapid inscriptions about not
exhuming the past until the day
when smoke rises from a hole in the ground
alarming no tots, but then a journey like a cipher
elaborates its undoing. To have knitted scarlet
earnests in the epistolary novel of my Russian phrase book
and cloned them to a besmirched integrity
was my plan all along. There was no need to get your
balls in an uproar. Now, during one of the violinist’s durable
encores the horse is teed off again, galloping toward the horizon
with the frail buggy and its precious cargo (two terrified
jeunes filles) in tow; the violet ribbon comes undone
and precious antique letters pepper the landscape
of early spring with plangent, mourning-dove complaints.
Why did you never write me? I bled for centuries
from that tiny puncture wound. One day I woke up whole
and it was all unreal, though I could hear the music
of your fingertips sliding over vellum, the scenery.
Meanwhile I had been getting stronger every day
without anyone’s suspecting it, myself least of all.
When I finally stood up my head towered above the hills
and brass gates, terrorizing the little folk
beneath, who raced like ants in all directions.
Now I was past caring. Those feverish gifts
from many Christmases ago ceased to implore
or annoy. I eyed them wanly. Only a picture of a barefoot girl
sitting on a fence rang a distant bell, and that sullenly,
too deeply buried in today’s growth
to answer my clear call.
I understand by this that you are taking over.
Wait—here is the key. Now that Lord Chesterfield has joined us
you’ll need it to unlock conversations, great ones,
as a great wind is great. I am lucky to have come so far, only so far,
though the pantheon receives us all. Such is its way.
To be roofed and slavish, and then unstitched by apes,
is all a fellow needs, these modern days, unkempt, mourning
beside a gate, forever undecided,
like a partially opened umbrella.
The Water Carrier
I did not, then,
or later, pull my finger out of the hole
and make us as comfortable as possible.
While driving down East Raven Street
baroque and proud,
extend my hand to the nearest of you,
only the nearest.
Our decisions were made in filing-card days.
Now, someone else emotes.
Was it—? The oh-so-long summer,
gravel in one’s boots—then, at night,
lettuces.
But continuing along
then, as now, soul-kissed
the powers, one after the other
into a haunting new day.
By the dried-out concrete pier
another was watching,
slowly, spilling his beans
into the pants, or porridge, of the night thing.
Then there were only a few of us orphans
who laugh, and shout,
lingering by the manure pile
who do daylong things.
Theme
If I were a piano shawl
a porch on someone’s house
flooding the suave timbre …
Then forty, he,
a unique monsieur—
and yet he never wanted to look into it.
“Have you forgotten your little Kiki?”
Smoke from the horses’ nostrils
wreathed the pump by the well.
The stink of snow
was everywhere. Too bad it looks
so good.
O beautiful and true
thou that glitterest
, in storms,
starting to discuss gardening. I don’t
want to throw cold water
on this.
That music has changed my life
a lot, since I made the
mistake of learning it.
Another passionless day. The peach
forms a stain
at the end of the line.
Learn to lock love enjoy:
“The dream I dreamed
was not denied me;
hence my love is mad—
a castle’s satin walls
folded in blood.”
The deputy returned
the peashooter. I have learned
to plait wasps
into a bronze necropolis.
The ticket and the water
only endure, as one can
in the right circumstances,
mon cher Tommy. I think the theme
created itself somewhere
around here and cannot find itself.
Three Dusks
I think it’s nice of me
to admire this coastline
of small houses:
firm outlines.
How the drainpipes sag
in the eves,
reserved for the bounciest
critter.
Ouch! Was that a new flavor?
•
Anyway, they come and go.
No point in trying to stop ’em
or say hello: They’d misinterpret
this as a sign of greed
on your part. I know;
that’s why I ripped up the goalposts.
•
No one ought to know
what I was thought to know
for many years, among cherries
and without. The victor wears a stovepipe hat.
Your mucilaginous narratives come from somewhere:
I know that. I urge you to use your influence
with the young prince. He’s headstrong,
and a bit difficult, besides, at times.
You’re a perfect size 7,
you know. Yes, I know.
But what comes out of me
strolls back into dark.
It were not good
to show much of me,
only what red
neon can understand,
whisper to a little brother.
There were tens of thousands of cabbages
in the field.
Now, what one wanted was a little broth
with butter in it.
The cranes have flown far from their perch …
Today’s Academicians
Again, what forces the critic to bury his
agenda in interleaving textualities and so
bring the past face-to-face with his present
isn’t naughty, but it is both silly and wrong.
The past will have to get by on sheer pluck
or charm, entirely consistent with its ten-
dency to nullify and romanticize things. The
way a pain begins. The flying squirrels of
this particular rain forest mope in flight;
the audience has already done what it can for
them; and the pure light of their endeavor
bespeaks the modesty of the program: “mere?”
anarchy. That the men with spotted suits
and ties get down to it is one more nail in
their coffin. These portly curmudgeons dig-
nify no endeavor and are also about as “right”
as the weather ever gets. All in my time.
More meteor magic. Seems like.
Touching, the Similarities
Surely it was the same blank wall of twenty years ago.
How the past identified with every kind of collectible,
so there were not just the things we knew about.
The girl in white ran across the little bridge scattering pigeons
this way and that, there was no contenting them.
A little house poked up from under the vines.
Have a few beers at the Topple Inn,
throw a few darts at the board, put
someone’s eye out, spend the rest of your life
under a pall. Granted, it must have been easy.
The similarities must have been monstrous then,
yet the obtuse angle of evening is mum on the subject.
Tower of Darkness
I cannot remain outside any longer
in the cold and pervasive rain.
I grab my crotch wishing for a ball of light
in the shaggy interior other people have.
I shall go away without fetching a grain
from the earth,
compact,
with the climbing design
we knew and hated so well, and when it was our turn
to die we just gave up, mumbling some excuse.
Do you often go to see them?
They can’t have much cause
to journey here, yet their footprints,
foreclosed by snow …
It was the barker whose patter started it
well before we were awake, into the dawn
that grizzles, now, a fright
to be wished, to be read,
unlike the old healing that will come again in time.
Tremendous Outpouring
According to most of these people, a good “ladle”
is hard to get—mothers of such things, the cousins, added on,
splashing and crying. I brushed him. Let others watch
the espaliered proof, the tapered belfry. The human gust.
Little things like that—would I
like to request it? No.
In the cold night, spun out of the past,
the names. Frost. An obscure petulance fattens the rafters
overhead, bulges the curtains. The cigarette boat
goes out. The urban brewery
coincided with the jingle in my pants
to chill those ways.
Tuesday Evening
She plundered the fun in his hair.
The others were let go.
There was a wet star on the stair.
Upstairs it had decided to snow.
Not everyone gets off at this stop
the turtlelike conductor said.
If you’d like to hear those beans hop
it could be arranged in your head.
Now from every side, cheerleaders
and their disc-eyed boyfriends come.
The latter put up bird feeders.
Birds alight on them and are dumb
with anticipation of the meal.
The punishment is not due
in our time said the wise old eel.
Its overture is still distant in the blue
sign of a vacant factory. You’ll know
when it starts up. Darn! That’s what I thought
it would be, I said. Isn’t there a hoe
somewhere to root these weeds out?
Or a chair on a blanket
of a manor house in time
and shouldn’t we somehow thank it
for the perfection of the climb?
Straight over roads, in culottes
the marching women go. Why besmirch
that casket, choose fleshpots
over a stand of young birch?
The veranda failed to make an impression,
ditto the lavaliere.
Potted ferns have become my obsession,
waltzing under the chandelier.
No one weeps to me anymore.
Then up and spake greengrocer Fred:
“Time and love are a whore
and after the news there is bed
to take to. Don’t you agree?
It’s lonely to believe, but it’s half
the fun. Here, take a pee
on me, but over there by that calf.”
The things we thought of naming
are crystals now. You can see from the porte cochere
now a small business flaming,
now the besotted rind of some pear.
It all seems ages ago—that time
of not being able to choose
or think of a rhyme
for “so many books to peruse
until the body is done.” A chicken
might pass by and never notice
us standing pale as a mannequin,
clutching a fistful of myositis
as though this would matter some day to some lover
when the time was ripe and our mooring
had been sliced. Then it would be time to rediscover
a plashing that would seem more alluring
for being ancient. You see, the past
never happened. Nothing can survive long in its heady
embrace. Our memories are a simulcast
of lost conventions, already
drowning in their sleep. In some such
wise we outgrew ourselves, lianas
over lichen. Forasmuch
as sweetness comes to the nicotianas
only at evening, your arrangement is overbred,
threadbare. You may want to think about this
a little. Down in their pavilion, whose overfed
airs waft lightly, naughtily, Dad and Sis
are waving, ca
lling your name, over
and over again. But it’s like a wall of veil
tipped in. We can dance only alone. Rover
senses an advantage—it’s the Airedale
from the next block again. To keep even the peace
sounds extraneous, now. How many senses
do we need? Our motives predecease our
cashing them in. Fences
will be happy to relieve you of that icon
for a small consideration. And you,
what about you? Slowly unraveling, the chaconne
sizes us up: right pew,
wrong church. O if ever the devil
comes to claim his due, let it be after
the touching ceremony, yet before the revel
becomes frenzied, and ambitions turn to laughter.
Resist, friends, that last day’s dying.
The melodious mode obtains. Always
remember that. At trying
moments, practice the art of paraphrase.
Just because someone hands you something of value
don’t imagine you’re in it for the money.
You can always tell a gal-pal you
prefer the snakeroot’s scented hegemony.
Or go for a walk. It counts too.
In my charming madness I dress plainer
than when they used to mispronounce you,
but what’s correct streetwear in N’Djamena
clashes in the old upstate classroom.
Come, we’re weak enough to share a posset,
divide with the boys another hecatomb.
All other rodomontades are strictly bullshit.
Such are the passwords that tired Aeneas
wept for outside the potting shed,
when, face pressed to the pane, he sought Linnaeus’
sage advice. And the farm turned over a new leaf instead.
We can’t resist; we’re all thumbs, it seems,
when it comes to grasping mantras.
The oxen are waiting for us downstream; academe’s
no place for botanizing; the tantra’s
closed to us. Song and voice, piano and flowers,
abduct us to their plateau.
Look—becalmed, a horse devours
buttercups in the ruts by an old château.
If this is about being regal, it must be Japan
has assented. Let’s take the vaporetto
to where it goes. A sea cucumber of marzipan
promises decorum. The boatman quaffs Amaretto.
Well, and this is the way I’ve always done it. A fricative
voice from this valley wants to think so. Those jars of ointment
are still untouched. Were patients always so uncommunicative?