John Ashbery

Not the smoothness, not the insane clocks on the square, the scent of manure in the municipal parterre, not the fabrics, the sullen mockery of Tweety Bird, not the fresh troops that needed freshening up. If it occurred in real time, it was OK, and if it was time in a novel that was OK too. From palace and hovel the great parade flooded avenue and byway and turnip fields became just another highway. Leftover bonbons were thrown to the chickens and geese, who squawked like the very dickens. There was no peace in the bathroom, none in the china closet or the banks, where no one came to make a deposit. In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon. By evening all was calm again. A crescent moon hung in the sky like a parrot on its perch. Departing guests smiled and called, "See you in church!" For night, as usual, knew what it was doing, providing sleep to offset the great ungluing that tomorrow again would surely bring. As I gazed at the quiet rubble, one thing puzzled me: What had happened, and why? One minute we were up to our necks in rebelliousness, and the next, peace had subdued the ranks of hellishness. So often it happens that the time we turn around in soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in. And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free.

When Eduard Raban, coming along the passage, walked into the open doorway, he saw that it was raining. It was not raining much. KAFKA, Wedding Preparations in the Country The concept is interesting: to see, as though reflected In streaming windowpanes, the look of others through Their own eyes. A digest of their correct impressions of Their self-analytical attitudes overlaid by your Ghostly transparent face. You in falbalas Of some distant but not too distant era, the cosmetics, The shoes perfectly pointed, drifting (how long you Have been drifting; how long I have too for that matter) Like a bottle-imp toward a surface which can never be approached, Never pierced through into the timeless energy of a present Which would have its own opinions on these matters, Are an epistemological snapshot of the processes That first mentioned your name at some crowded cocktail Party long ago, and someone (not the person addressed) Overheard it and carried that name around in his wallet For years as the wallet crumbled and bills slid in And out of it. I want that information very much today, Can't have it, and this makes me angry. I shall use my anger to build a bridge like that Of Avignon, on which people may dance for the feeling Of dancing on a bridge. I shall at last see my complete face Reflected not in the water but in the worn stone floor of my bridge. I shall keep to myself. I shall not repeat others' comments about me.

Ages passed slowly, like a load of hay, As the flowers recited their lines And pike stirred at the bottom of the pond. The pen was cool to the touch. The staircase swept upward Through fragmented garlands, keeping the melancholy Already distilled in letters of the alphabet. It would be time for winter now, its spun-sugar Palaces and also lines of care At the mouth, pink smudges on the forehead and cheeks, The color once known as “ashes of roses.” How many snakes and lizards shed their skins For time to be passing on like this, Sinking deeper in the sand as it wound toward The conclusion. It had all been working so well and now, Well, it just kind of came apart in the hand As a change is voiced, sharp As a fishhook in the throat, and decorative tears flowed Past us into a basin called infinity. There was no charge for anything, the gates Had been left open intentionally. Don’t follow, you can have whatever it is. And in some room someone examines his youth, Finds it dry and hollow, porous to the touch. O keep me with you, unless the outdoors Embraces both of us, unites us, unless The birdcatchers put away their twigs, The fishermen haul in their sleek empty nets And others become part of the immense crowd Around this bonfire, a situation That has come to mean us to us, and the crying In the leaves is saved, the last silver drops.

We were sitting there, and I made a joke about how it doesn’t dovetail: time, one minute running out faster than the one in front it catches up to. That way, I said, there can be no waste. Waste is virtually eliminated. To come back for a few hours to the present subject, a painting, looking like it was seen, half turning around, slightly apprehensive, but it has to pay attention to what’s up ahead: a vision. Therefore poetry dissolves in brilliant moisture and reads us to us. A faint notion. Too many words, but precious.

The room I entered was a dream of this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

The room I entered was a dream of   this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of   a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing Into something forgetful, although angry with history. They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance, Though this is only one example. They emerged until a tower Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back Into the past for swans and tapering branches, Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love. Then you are left with an idea of yourself And the feeling of ascending emptiness of the afternoon Which must be charged to the embarrassment of others Who fly by you like beacons. The night is a sentinel. Much of your time has been occupied by creative games Until now, but we have all-inclusive plans for you. We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert, To a violent sea, or of having the closeness of the others be air To you, pressing you back into a startled dream As sea-breezes greet a child’s face. But the past is already here, and you are nursing some private project. The worst is not over, yet I know You will be happy here. Because of the logic Of your situation, which is something no climate can outsmart. Tender and insouciant by turns, you see You have built a mountain of something, Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument, Whose wind is desire starching a petal, Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.

What had you been thinking about the face studiously bloodied heaven blotted region I go on loving you like water but there is a terrible breath in the way all of this You were not elected president, yet won the race All the way through fog and drizzle When you read it was sincere the coasts stammered with unintentional villages the horse strains fatigued I guess . . . the calls . . . I worry the water beetle head why of course reflecting all then you redid you were breathing I thought going down to mail this of the kettle you jabbered as easily in the yard you come through but are incomparable the lovely tent mystery you don’t want surrounded the real you dance in the spring there was clouds The mulatress approached in the hall—the lettering easily visible along the edge of the Times in a moment the bell would ring but there was time for the carnation laughed here are a couple of “other” to one in yon house The doctor and Philip had come over the road Turning in toward the corner of the wall his hat on reading it carelessly as if to tell you your fears were justified the blood shifted you know those walls wind off the earth had made him shrink undeniably an oboe now the young were there there was candy to decide the sharp edge of the garment like a particular cry not intervening called the dog “he’s coming! he’s coming” with an emotion felt it sink into peace there was no turning back but the end was in sight he chose this moment to ask her in detail about her family and the others The person.   pleaded—“have more of these not stripes on the tunic—or the porch chairs will teach you about men—what it means” to be one in a million pink stripe and now could go away the three approached the doghouse the reef.   Your daughter’s dream of my son understand prejudice darkness in the hole the patient finished They could all go home now the hole was dark lilacs blowing across his face glad he brought you

Orpheus liked the glad personal quality Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks Can’t withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness. Then Apollo quietly told him: “Leave it all on earth. Your lute, what point? Why pick at a dull pavan few care to Follow, except a few birds of dusty feather, Not vivid performances of the past.” But why not? All other things must change too. The seasons are no longer what they once were, But it is the nature of things to be seen only once, As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along Somehow. That’s where Orpheus made his mistake. Of course Eurydice vanished into the shade; She would have even if he hadn’t turned around. No use standing there like a gray stone toga as the whole wheel Of recorded history flashes past, struck dumb, unable to utter an intelligent Comment on the most thought-provoking element in its train. Only love stays on the brain, and something these people, These other ones, call life. Singing accurately So that the notes mount straight up out of the well of Dim noon and rival the tiny, sparkling yellow flowers Growing around the brink of the quarry, encapsulates The different weights of the things. But it isn’t enough To just go on singing. Orpheus realized this And didn’t mind so much about his reward being in heaven After the Bacchantes had torn him apart, driven Half out of their minds by his music, what it was doing to them. Some say it was for his treatment of Eurydice. But probably the music had more to do with it, and The way music passes, emblematic Of life and how you cannot isolate a note of it And say it is good or bad. You must Wait till it’s over. “The end crowns all,” Meaning also that the “tableau” Is wrong. For although memories, of a season, for example, Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting; It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal, Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt, Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this Is to become the tossing reeds of that slow, Powerful stream, the trailing grasses Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action No more than this. Then in the lowering gentian sky Electric twitches are faintly apparent first, then burst forth Into a shower of fixed, cream-colored flares. The horses Have each seen a share of the truth, though each thinks, “I’m a maverick. Nothing of this is happening to me, Though I can understand the language of birds, and The itinerary of the lights caught in the storm is fully apparent to me. Their jousting ends in music much As trees move more easily in the wind after a summer storm And is happening in lacy shadows of shore-trees, now, day after day.” But how late to be regretting all this, even Bearing in mind that regrets are always late, too late! To which Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours, Replies that these are of course not regrets at all, Merely a careful, scholarly setting down of Unquestioned facts, a record of pebbles along the way. And no matter how all this disappeared, Or got where it was going, it is no longer Material for a poem. Its subject Matters too much, and not enough, standing there helplessly While the poem streaked by, its tail afire, a bad Comet screaming hate and disaster, but so turned inward That the meaning, good or other, can never Become known. The singer thinks Constructively, builds up his chant in progressive stages Like a skyscraper, but at the last minute turns away. The song is engulfed in an instant in blackness Which must in turn flood the whole continent With blackness, for it cannot see. The singer Must then pass out of sight, not even relieved Of the evil burthen of the words. Stellification Is for the few, and comes about much later When all record of these people and their lives Has disappeared into libraries, onto microfilm. A few are still interested in them. “But what about So-and-so?” is still asked on occasion. But they lie Frozen and out of touch until an arbitrary chorus Speaks of a totally different incident with a similar name In whose tale are hidden syllables Of what happened so long before that In some small town, one indifferent summer.

One died, and the soul was wrenched out Of the other in life, who, walking the streets Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on The same corners, volumetrics, shadows Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever Called, through increasingly suburban airs And ways, with autumn falling over everything: The plush leaves the chattels in barrels Of an obscure family being evicted Into the way it was, and is. The other beached Glimpses of what the other was up to: Revelations at last. So they grew to hate and forget each other. So I cradle this average violin that knows Only forgotten showtunes, but argues The possibility of free declamation anchored To a dull refrain, the year turning over on itself In November, with the spaces among the days More literal, the meat more visible on the bone. Our question of a place of origin hangs Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests, In coves with the water always seeping up, and left Our trash, sperm and excrement everywhere, smeared On the landscape, to make of us what we could.