Your Name Here: Poems

by John Ashbery

  though, a great one. Want to hear ...

  TWO FOR THE ROAD

  Did you want it plain or frosted? (Plain vanilla or busted?)

  I bet you’ve been writing again. She reached under her skirt. Why don’t you let a person see it? Naw, it’s no good. Just some chilblains that got lodged in my fingertips. Who said so? I’ll tell you if it’s any good or not, if you’ll stop covering it with your hand.

  For Pete’s sake—

  We had forgotten that it was noon, the hour when the ravens emerge from the door beside the huge clock face and march around it, then back inside to the showers. Oh, where were you going to say let’s perform it?

  I thought it was evident from my liquor finish steel.

  Oh right, you can certainly have your cocktail, it’s my shake, my fair shake. Dust-colored hydrangeas fell out of the pitcher onto the patio. Darned if someone doesn’t like it this way and always knows it’s going to happen like this when it does. But let me read to you from my peaceful new story:

  “Then the cinnamon tigers arose and there was peace for maybe a quarter of a century. But you know how things always turn out. The dust bowl slid in through the French doors. Maria? it said. Would you mind just coming over here and standing for a moment. Take my place. It’ll only be for a minute. I must go see how the lemmings are doing. And that is how she soiled herself and brought eternal night upon our shy little country.”

  HEARTACHE

  Sometimes a dangerous slice-of-life

  like stepping off a board-game

  into a frantic lagoon

  drags the truth from the bathroom, where it has been hiding.

  “Do whatever you like to improve the situation,

  and—good luck,” it added, like a barber adding an extra plop of lather

  to a stupefied customer’s face. “When they let you out

  I’ll be waiting for you.” It had been that way ever since a girl with braids

  teased him about getting too short. Yeah, and I’ll bet they have

  places for people like you too. Trouble is, I don’t know of any.

  The years whirled quickly by, an upward spiral

  toward what ghastly ascendency? He didn’t know. He cried.

  One November the police chief came calling.

  He had secretly been collecting all the bright kids

  in the universe, popping them into a big bag

  which he lugged home with him. No one was too sure what happened

  after that. The kids were past caring; they had the run

  of the house after all. Was it so much better outside?

  Snow lashed the windowpanes as though punishing them

  for having the property of being seen through. The little town

  grew quieter. No one missed the kids. They had been too bright

  for that to happen. Night sprang out of the dense cold

  like an infuriated ocelot with her cub that someone had been trying

  to steal, or so it pretended. The frightened townspeople sped away.

  There was no longer any room on the sidewalk

  for anything but “v’s” drawn in pink chalk, the way a child

  draws a seagull. Down at the tavern the neon glowed a comforting

  red. “All beer on tap,” it said, and

  “Booths for Ladies.”

  THE FORTUNE COOKIE CRUMBLES

  You have a kind and gentle nature. Not overly

  challenged more than once. The “small things” matter

  once you’ve replaced the dish on the shelf

  and moved very convincingly toward the door.

  “Just dying for attention,” you’ve been around

  the block yourself a few times, paid the bills

  and furniture. You were a tulip

  in some past life, it says here. You have “two lips,”

  as winy and luscious as a Chevy

  in your dad’s garage.

  On a sorry note, your correspondent

  notes that you have a tendency to fly off to Europe

  at the slightest provocation. Must mean you’re getting old,

  or “devoid of charm” is maybe what it says.

  It is likely that a viable present can be brokered.

  Your past is all used up now, anyway.

  The lilies love you more than ever

  now, it seems. I love you too, but my brow

  is furrowed.

  I mean, what am I going to tell my shoe?

  ONION SKIN

  In the end it was their tales of warring stampedes

  that finished us off. We could not go them one better

  and they knew it, and put our head on a stamp.

  “Then I should have some pain, too?”

  REDEEMED AREA

  Do you know where you live? Probably.

  Abner is getting too old to drive but won’t admit it.

  The other day he got in his car to go buy some cough drops

  of a kind they don’t make anymore. And the drugstore

  has been incorporated into a mall about seven miles away

  with only about half the stores rented. There are three

  other malls within a four-mile area. All the houses

  are owned by the same guy, who’s been renting

  them out to college students for years, so they are virtually uninhabitable.

  A smell of vitriol and socks pervades the area

  like an open sewer in a souk. Anyway the cough drops

  (a new brand) tasted pretty good—like catnip

  or an orange slice that has lain on a girl’s behind.

  That’s the electrician calling now—

  nobody else would call before 7 A.M. Now we’ll have some

  electricity in the place. I’ll start by plugging in

  the Christmas tree lights. They were what made the whole thing

  go up in sparks the last time. Next, the light

  by the dictionary stand, so I can look some words up.

  Then probably the toaster. A nice slice

  of toast would really hit the spot now. I’m afraid it’s all over

  between us, though; Make nice, like you really cared,

  I’ll change my chemise, and we can dance around the room

  like demented dogs, eager for a handout or they don’t

  know what. Gradually, everything will return to normal, I

  promise you that. There’ll be things for you to write about

  in your diary, a fur coat for me, a lavish shoe tree for that other.

  Make that two slices. I can see you only through a vegetal murk

  not unlike coral, if it were semi-liquid, or a transparent milkshake.

  I have adjusted the lamp,

  morning’s at seven,

  the tarnish has fallen from the metallic embroidery, the walls have fallen,

  the country’s pulse is racing. Parents are weeping,

  the schools have closed.

  All the fuss has put me in a good mood,

  O great sun.

  VARIATIONS ON “LA FOLIA”

  Now another one who said it is gone,

  killing all the wonderful suspense, desired or not.

  Shut the window. It’s chilly in here.

  Yes, I know it’s only open a crack.

  It’s “all moon and no stars” again,

  and I cast no shadow.

  It’s not a good thing.

  There aren’t that many seats.

  I remember when Clement Attlee was world premier.

  There was more austerity then but less things to get done.

  The amniotic valley still holds memories of those

  kids who have sway, some blue-violet,

  some only an outline. It was what he meant by austerity,

  I think. There was a man named Silhouette once,

  renowned for his stinginess.

  As I think about it the more it gets lighter and brighter.

  I had asked fo
r it monogrammed.

  A hurricane blasted the triple-mud sundae

  into the room where I like to write sometimes in the afternoons.

  There was no dealing with the gangsters then.

  They all had disappeared.

  My dog, green pussy, came along with my bowl of grape-nuts.

  I let out an unaccustomed howl

  yet no hoosegow gaped.

  I was wholly on my own.

  Hollyhocks strangled the windmill’s blades

  till it stopped to ask for more, for directions

  where it was going, which obviously was nowhere.

  Cormorants clove the air. Men had poured oil

  on their eggs to prevent them from hatching

  so as not to reduce the fish population,

  though the fish had never asked for that. Far from

  it. They believed in the equality of the species,

  that a pesky bird was worth no more and no less than a dumb fish.

  Man, again, is the interloper here. He takes whatever he chooses

  from the dish life holds out, then acts surprised

  a century or two later when the world has spun out of control,

  and wakes up scratching his head, wondering what happened.

  We should all be so lucky as to get hit by the meteor

  of an idea once in our lives. It would save a lot of hand-wringing

  and bells tolling in the undersea cathedral,

  a noise to drive one mad, past the brink of human decency.

  Please don’t tell me it all adds up in the end.

  I’m sick of that one.

  DE SENECTUTE

  Whatever charms is alien.

  Throw it back in the water, makes no difference.

  I was amazed at your absence, child,

  from the chapel’s round window.

  You forgot, you see.

  And me, sometimes.

  There is true worth strapped away in there.

  Fifty is young today. So’s eighty. Depends

  on which side you’re looking at it from.

  And she leans toward purple colas,

  returns with salt on her tunic’s hem.

  Too crazed to cry. In which she resembles

  all of us. I’m not going to the benefit.

  I hate charity. But it’s the greatest

  of the three. Can’t help it, I’m an old boa

  constrictor. I feel about life much as you do:

  as a diary from many years ago. We thought we’d caught

  something in March, some kind of flu,

  but it lasted even until now,

  though no one remembers it. You will,

  upon opening your garage door, stumble

  on some unpleasant evidence of the neighbor’s dog’s

  recent passage. Is there anything you can do?

  No. Later on in spring, when the robins

  are nesting, something will splat on your car’s windshield

  or windscreen. Again, it profits not

  to go looking for causes and effects

  in a froth of rage whipped up

  by someone else. August with its cooling showers

  from the hose invites us to take a breather.

  Yes, a breather is what we’ve longed for,

  can get no closer to

  than the rain barrel, its surface of dust and

  fruitflies. Well, back to work

  again. It is the one thing that won’t be

  denied that won’t save us. Pensively, the watch crystal’s

  warning us to be off, ere another hour strikes.

  Oh, I love you so much in such a little time

  it seems a shame to have to go on living.

  Yet another hour protrudes. The imps

  have all become children. Well, wish them away.

  The pyramid’s gravitas

  will never manifest itself with them around.

  The wolf took up a broom and swept the walk

  up to the front door, and seemed to

  want to be petted for its efforts.

  The hell with that. The empty corral

  is on the point of coming into being, a “perfect”

  circle, brand new as you please.

  Somebody, someone in authority, said it was all a joke,

  so we packed up and went home that day.

  THE GODS OF FAIRNESS

  The failure to see God is not a problem

  God has a problem with. Sure, he could see us

  if he had a hankering to do so, but that’s

  not the point. The point is his concern

  for us and for biscuits. For the loaf

  of bread that turns in the night sky over Stockholm.

  Not there, over there. And I yelled them

  what I had told them before. The affair is no one’s business.

  The peeing man seemed not to notice either.

  We came up the strand with carbuncles

  and chessmen fetched from the wreck. Finally the surplus buzz

  did notice, and it was fatal to our project.

  We just gave up then and there, some of us dying, others walking

  wearily but contentedly away. God had had his little joke,

  but who was to say it wasn’t ours? Nobody, apparently,

  which could be why the subject was never raised

  in discussion groups in old houses along the harbor,

  some of them practically falling into it.

  Yet still they chatter a little ruefully: “I know

  your grace’s preference.” There are times

  when I even think I can read his mind,

  coated with seed-pearls and diamonds.

  There they are, for the taking. Take them away.

  Deposit them in whatever suburban bank you choose.

  Hurry, before he changes his mind—again.

  But all they did was lean on their shovels, dreaming

  of spring planting, and the marvelous harvests to come.

  WHO KNOWS WHAT CONSTITUTES A LIFE

  Really? Uncle Pedro is coming

  with his entire entourage? They want

  to take over the whole top floor?

  They say they’ll be arriving soon? Day

  after tomorrow? Not in a century,

  I bet. These things are like dreams

  of things that are real. And they really exist

  beyond the breezeway, where no man has ever been.

  How, then, can we be confident

  they are solid and peaceful, like chimeras?

  The shit list is long

  and extends far back into the last century.

  If we admit them now ...

  I was just standing on the landing

  and a rush of air whooshed by me

  on its way to the attic. I caught the scent

  of Uncle Pedro’s discreet eau de toilette

  (notes of lily-of-the-valley and wild hickory bark)

  but to conclude that I am involved in this,

  or that any of it is my affair, is, well,

  downright dour. I am off on my own again,

  will return in an hour

  to see if the house has burned down

  or the calf given birth to calflets.

  SACRED AND PROFANE DANCES

  If all you want is kittens,

  come back later. At dusk. No later.

  The kittens will be in by then.

  “What if I said I want no kittens,

  just a big fat you?” The Motorway City,

  Leeds, has more of them, more varieties.

  And I said I just couldn’t. Mime the dialogue

  any faster. They’re taking rollcall now.

  With all the spontaneity of a sarabande

  he wakes up, showers, puts on a tie,

  jumps in his Dodge and drives to work.

  Here there are other, secret choices.

  He cannot look at them. He must needs leave this place,
>
  office, whatever. The beavers look at him endangered

  from their saw-palmetto-shrouded photomural.

  No matter, he’s driving to this special house.

  Word gets out. He makes a U-turn

  and is soon speeding along a numbered highway

  out in the country somewhere. “How did it get so itchy?

  So late?” They bind him to the trash

  and escort him up the ramp, to the sacrificial slab.

  Oh? Well, if that’s the way things work out,

  more power to ’em. Being is only a way of being.

  When in doubt, fast forward, I always say.

  Now that it’s Christmas and Mother

  there must be an explanation for the shadows,

  the gaps in the grass of the downs

  over there. “Ssh. Don’t think.”

  And I was all for a descent into a churn

  in my diving helmet. Funny the way things work out.

  I said, it’s funny the way things work out.

  HERE WE GO LOOBY

  Where is that tricycle, man?

  You know I set much store by it

  since there is nothing else in the world right now.

  Here is the church and here is the steeple

  and the vast hill that recedes under them

  down to the squirrel’s nest. He has to have one,

  you know. She wrote letters and crushed them

  under her pillow. Years later they turned up

  in the mill race floating quietly, secretively,

  near the shore. I’ll

  get up and get one. No,

  you won’t. This is strictly the governor’s business,