Wakefulness: Poems

by John Ashbery

  looking for someone to blame itself on, you, I …

  All these people coming in …

  The last time we necked

  I noticed this lobe on your ear.

  Please, tell me we may begin.

  All the wolves in the wolf factory paused

  at noon, for a moment of silence.

  FROM SUCH COMMOTION

  The dress code is casual, the atmosphere relaxed

  in the licensed quarters of our city;

  young couples graciously stopping beneath umbrellas

  in the street …

  And this is not a thing that matters:

  walks on grass, through flaring Adirondack chairs.

  You caught me napping said the belle-lettriste.

  No, perhaps it’s not that, that’s the point. You’ve

  been in to see these?

  And we should have decided to go there, gone for a second time.

  Yes, well, they’re working on it, et cetera, etc.

  The summer capital exits past us, we have to

  sell product. It “fell through” the European system,

  now it’s time for avatars. At four in the morning

  the art demonstrations begin, psalteries jingle, the whole damn ocean

  is there, up for review, for us. It’s just

  that we don’t understand. It’s my negative capability acting up

  again. Well, I’m within my rights.

  It’s like apples and pears, or oranges and lemons,

  what I always say.

  From nests as admirable as these, wallpaper islands,

  the vivid flow reverses. That’s in-house.

  And we go as far

  with them as possible, suffer stupid reverses, get plastered,

  the goateed scorpion insists.

  And it was while waiting for the drying to happen that we all got lost.

  Please, he insisted, there’s more to the point than two doors, O I know

  it I said, I can’t be damned to travel

  any time. You should have pointed the way to me while I can,

  while it’s still light, otherwise what will all your gnashing accomplish,

  the oatmeal? Please. Now just go away. It’s

  raining, the sun is shining, braver outdoors. Can we come listen to that.

  MODERATELY

  “…and as the last will come a sort of moderate part, (which some is of multiple motions, quick, slow, hampered, expressive, popular, and peopled speech…)”

  —Stepan Wolpe

  The fox brooding and the old people smelling

  and the tiebreaker—why did I not think of that?

  Why have doubts upon me come? Why

  this worldliness?

  And I remember no longer at the age of sixteen,

  and at the age of seventeen great rollers

  eating into night, I uncared for,

  stopping among the weeds along the way. Phantom

  harvesters hovered. And the great, dry creekbed was a sea

  of gravel and stones, the willows were capsized ships,

  and none of it was for now.

  There is a draught

  in the room

  and all along the room a sight that is like living

  and looking out over a situation. The periods danced in a sentence,

  and it was my way, the one I chose, even if I didn’t choose it,

  or like it; was all a coming on,

  downpour,

  marooned on slopes.

  And then the burst of it.

  He knew what the world’s going to be like I think,

  so why the explosions? And caught in the draught,

  one fell from darkness, two fell from darkness,

  yet another. Maybe that’s dust a very fine kind of dust and I eat it,

  it goes on thrumming, seated in the back row of the orchestra,

  men masturbating here and there and like I said the clock

  is tremendous,

  wider than any minute hand or hour hand.

  And sheepish it fell out of books:

  the land of painful blisses,

  the man who stubbed his toe.

  All around us pain came sledding in,

  and am I like this today, tomorrow, and two

  tickets please, the boy and the ruffian come undone,

  he was in the park, it was the salutary last person

  to hoodwink you and all is well.

  There were times a kind of cream was on the jagged borders

  or suchlike events and carnivals, and you sat, smiling,

  the tongue unleashed from its surroundings. Why was I never here?

  Why such playacting? Didn’t I ever realize the kernels are deep-seated,

  that everyman will overrun his banks just like an errant stream,

  and cardboard principles be jostled? O who

  mentioned this session? What is the matter with truth and paying

  and all over the paisley fields dominoes are braying,

  a matter of luck, or chance, it seems? Who broke the next dish?

  Why is that man crying,

  what does he mean to do? Impertinent, in person,

  what does he mean to do,

  if these capers are not unusual

  and bricks merge with sand, the unusual

  at its best as usual, and can’t we give up? What

  would be the point of continuing? I can’t smoke this weed,

  I give it back, we are all blessed, commensurates within

  a star where many things fit, too many, or not too many, whatever

  it says about you, whatever saves.

  ALIVE AT EVERY PASSAGE

  Roll up your sleeves,

  another day has ended. I am not a part of the vine

  that was going to put me through school

  but instead got sidetracked and wandered over the brink of an abyss

  while we were having a good time

  in full view of the nearest mountains. Mon trésor, she said, this is where I

  disappear for a few moments, I want you to be brave.

  Sure, nothing like a date in bed,

  waking after midnight to the blank TV screen

  that wants us all to listen to its cute life and someday understand

  what rhomboids the earth took

  on its way down to get us,

  that we must be happy and sad forever after. No I don’t think

  it was in your best interests nor do I shave with an old-fashioned straight-edge,

  you dolt. But I was coming to that,

  doing the mystifying. So if he says not to be aloha, not again,

  well gee in this old-fashioned bar, however will the runts learn from their again imploded

  hair balls how straight everything is.

  The rest, as they say, as they say, is history:

  I captured a barracuda, it was midnight in the old steeple, the clans casually

  moved on us, leggings barely jerked out of the ditch. It was folly

  to be noticed, then, astir on the perhaps more urgent

  surface of what becomes one, indeed comes to become one

  through impossible rain and the sly glee of mirrored xylophones.

  Say only it was one for the books,

  and we, we did belong, though not to anything anybody’d recognize

  as civil, or even territory. I need to subscribe,

  now, history will carry me along and as gently leave me

  here, in the cave, the enormous well-being

  of which we may not speak.

  THE BURDEN OF THE PARK

  Each is truly a unique piece,

  you said, or, perhaps, each

  is a truly unique piece.

  I sniff the difference.

  It’s like dust in an old house,

  or the water thereof. Then you come

  to an exciting part.

  The bandit affianced

  to the blind man
’s daughter. The mangel-wurzels

  that come out of every door, salute the traveler

  and are gone. Or the more melting pace of strolling players,

  each with a collapsed sweetie on his arm, each

  tidy as one’s idea of everything under the sun is tidy.

  And the wolverines

  return, with their coach, and night,

  the black bat night, is blacker than any bat.

  Just so you know, this is the falling-off place,

  for the water, where damsels stroll and uncles

  know a good thing when they see one.

  The park is all over.

  It isn’t a knee injury, or a postage stamp on Mars.

  It is all of the above, and some other things too:

  a nameless morning in May fielded by taut observers.

  An inner tube on a couch.

  Then we floated down the Great Array river, each

  in our inner tube, each one a different color:

  Mine was lime green, yours was pistachio.

  And the current murmured to us mind your back

  for another day. Are

  you so sure we haven’t passed the goalposts yet? Won’t

  you reconsider? Remount me to my source? Egad,

  Trixie, the water can speak! Like a boy

  it speaks, and I’m not so sure how little all this is,

  how much fuss shouldn’t be made about it. When another boy comes

  to the edge of the falls, and calls, for it is late,

  won’t we be sorry for not having invented this one,

  letting him fall by the wayside? Then, sure enough, waves

  of heather recuse the bearers of false witness, they fly like ribbons

  on the stiff breeze, telling of us: We once made

  some mistake, it seems, and now we are to be judged, except

  it isn’t so bad, someone tells me you’ll be let off the hook,

  we will all be able to go home, sojourn and smile again, be racked

  with insidious giggles like guilt. Meantime, jugglers swarm over the volcano’s

  stiff sides. We believe it to be Land’s End, that it’s

  six o’clock, and the razor fish have gone home.

  Once, on Mannahatta’s bleak shore,

  I trolled for spunkfish, but caught naught, nothing save

  a rubber plunger or two. It was awful,

  at that time. Now everything is cheerful.

  I wonder, does it make a difference?

  Are sailors waving

  from the deck of their distraught ship? We aren’t

  envious though, life being so full of

  so many little commotions, it’s up to

  whoever to grab his (or hers). The violin slices life up

  into manageable hunks, and the fiddler knows not

  who he is moving, or cares why people should be moved;

  his mind is on the end, the extraordinary onus of finishing

  what’s set out for him. Do you imagine him better off than you?

  My feet were numb, I ask him only, how do you carry this from here to over there?

  Is there a flat barge? How many feet does a centipede have?

  (Answer in tomorrow’s edition.) I heard the weeping cranes,

  telling how time was running out. It was Belgian,

  they thought. Nobody burns the midnight oil for this,

  yet I think I shall be a scholar someday, all the same.

  The hours suit me. And the rubber corsages the girls wear

  in and out of class. Sure, I’ll turn out to be a nerd, and have to sit

  in the corner, but that’s part of the exciting adventure. I know things

  are different and the same. Now if only I could tell you …

  The period of my rest is ended.

  I shall negotiate the fall, then go crying

  back to you all. In those years peace came and went, our father’s car changed

  with the seasons, all around us was fighting and the excitement of spring.

  Now, funnily enough, it’s over. I shan’t mind the vacant premise

  that vexed me once. I know it’s all too true. And the hooligan

  ogles a calla lily: Maybe only the fingertips are exciting,

  it thinks, disposing of another bushelful of ripe nostalgia.

  Maybe it’s too late,

  maybe they came today.

  AT THE STATION

  Renewed by everything, I thought

  I was a ghost. All we’ve got in the back seat are doors.

  I was just thinking

  it was time to go back, pick up the pieces,

  place them on a stand. You are nearer

  to the high-school orchestra.

  Youth plays absorbed.

  If it had its own way, we’d be

  outside. The decision is HERE!

  Already they’re taking it down,

  distributing the various parts to places built in the ground

  just for them. Next, we’d be tiptoeing

  up and down the station platform. Look,

  I’ve brought you a box of candied chestnuts, for the great voyage

  into the technical dream you will learn to read.

  For us, it is enough that the grass grows

  sideways into the loam,

  and that the wind is curious, silent tonight.

  ANOTHER KIND OF AFTERNOON

  Remotely the unnamed keeps up with me.

  It must be quite a time

  since the last dignitaries visited with you.

  Yes, and I’m about out of breath

  for all the quiet cells we kept company in.

  Must be a zillion years—

  Look, here comes one of them.

  I know I just met the czar’s brother

  in a book report. Soon it was time to return home,

  past the midpoint, skipping-place.

  Fierce, how that cloud suffocates

  the sun, then is gracious for a while

  but we can’t go back there

  due to the clamor, it’s just as well

  that they roll about

  on the grass, young ones, old ones, the deer,

  the pointer. And when you’ve imbibed as much

  of the hurt as likes you, it’s time for tag,

  game that rolls down through our lives

  over and over. You get what you have

  to ask for, which turns out to be enough

  to divide with the haphazard, rather ragged

  assembly.

  We didn’t go near the

  windmill again for years, it was as though it had crumbled

  in the imagination. Pretty soon six-pointed

  purple stars stabbed us awake, and my goodness …

  TANGLED STAR

  A cup drips air,

  peanuts fester. A wallaby streaks for the light,

  suspenders down, indeed his pantleg is falling.

  A ghost train appears over the snow-shrouded moor,

  shoving us into silence. I decline the irregular verbs

  of which our life is composed, but I cannot sing.

  It stirs in the pencil box.

  The ruler is too close for that.

  Wind chimes grate against the door,

  as though we never had one. Electricity

  is named for the first time.

  There are tensions. I suggest we try them out,

  but the New England steeple looks sourly at us,

  all coffins to the wind.

  Alas, we are forbidden to worship the tensions,

  even to play with them. If the next moon provides the addition,

  the hearse its hamper of ham sandwiches, why then we will go,

  as I told you we must. We are forever outdoors,

  saving people’s lives. The cattails get to see so much of us

  that their contempt breeds civility, and the swamp

  comes to seem right. Why hadn’t it s
eemed so all along?

  Now that it has gophers to chew on

  we can imagine a less festive, more brackish

  raison d’être of it. But we like it that our play be long,

  and too many overseers crowd the hutch.

  It is definitely time to move on.

  Yet I had thought all of this was a party.

  It is, but only in its duration, that sweeps us

  down the stairs and over the side of a hill

  where baubles float, and you get to interrogate that special someone.

  In a flash, more finches, blue jays and fronds appear,

  bronzed with a special effect of light, that says

  it only to outdoors. To imagine what lies outside it

  you would have to be a king or confidence man. And alas,

  we have other plans for you. You are to come to see us

  this evening, in the confusion of evening, to test our reflexes,

  to speak to the dressmaker’s dummy, and derive of it what comfort you can.

  Your horoscope says so. What sign are you? Aw, Libra

  with Pisces rising. Then I command you back to the cold

  that you like so much, even though I had second thoughts

  about it and everything. Can’t you see the bear’s paw

  prints? They are elusively alive, held up by the trainer’s

  hoop, to be an example

  to the ferocious wilderness. Here, take these herbs.

  So many things, so many role models.

  Their eagerness dances in the firelight.

  We can’t just say no to them, they have to live us

  too. And in places where the water has ebbed the sky is midnight blue,

  like ink spreading from a nib. They’re all here, the catchers,

  umpires, men in blue flannel suits, women

  with a trace of tears like re-embroidered lace,

  dusty with diamonds, seams in place. There is the mother;

  she calls to the son. The tortoise and the hare

  have come to tolerate us. Out on the lagoon

  macaws are coughing. It is important to respect our situation.

  One of them tries to get back to “normal,”

  but the place is too exaggerated. Madame Nola is here.

  And the bishop’s children. And silly Irmgard.

  And Rodney’s commando. The teacher’s pet. The cigar baron.

  Marshal Tito. The young Eleanor Roosevelt.

  DEEPLY INCISED

  If this is july, why does it look like August?

  Sadly growing up into the real world