by John Ashbery
The staves for the hull of some desolate
Ship; rather, it is in the disrepair
Of these lives that we not find despair
But all that nourishes and comforts death
In life and causes people to gather round
As when they hear a good story is being told
And makes us wish we were younger but also cherishes
Our advancing years, and to find there no fears.
The tower was more a tower inside a house.
Even its outside (tendril-clogged crannies)
Was shaded from the view of most.
It grew chaste, and slim, like a prism
In a protected, secular environment
That overlooked the torment, fogs and crevasses
Of orderly religion. That house
Grew all alone in a desolate avenue
(Avenue so shady)
That people began to forget coming to
Long before its present state
Of patched-up oblivion, and even
In those days were those who remembered back
To what seemed a state of true freedom:
Bopping down the valleys wild, beaks
Tearing the invisible ear to shreds
But was actually a rudimentary stage
Of serfdom dating from the Silver Age.
Now, however, that house was as it was
Never going to be: a modest yet firmly
Rooted pure excrescence, a spiritual
Rubber plant:
A grave no one wanted to visit
Which remained popular and holy down to the present afternoon,
Something which nobody in particular
Was interested in, yet which mattered more
To the earth’s population in general
Than practically anything they could think of.
It was history just as it disappears in the
Twilight of yesterday and before it
Materializes today as everything that is
Fresh, young, and strange, and almost
Out of the house and halfway down the street—
An index, in other words, of everything
That is not going to and is going to happen
To us once we forget about its progress
And actually begin to feel better
For having done so.
It goes without saying that
To have it make sense you
Would have to belong to all who are asleep
Making no sense, and then
Flowers of the desert begin, peep by peep,
To emerge and you are saved
Without having taken a step, but I
Don’t know how you’re going to get
Another person to do that. It all boils down to
Nothing, one supposes. There is a central crater
Which is the word, and around it
All the things that have names, a commotion
Of thrushes pretending to have hatched
Out of the great egg that still hasn’t been laid.
These one gets to know, and by then
They have formed tightly compartmented, almost feudal
Societies claiming kinship with the word:
(If on a priority basis however
It takes longer to catch them)
And their age flows out of time, is left
Like a bluish deposit on the brown ploughed fields
That surround our century: like the note of a harp.
The phosphorescent spring fails, and newer,
Numbered days come up. The wind pulls at
The leaves of the calendar, peels them off one by one
In a fitful expression of what time is like
As it goes by, that’s like a look
Out of a window, and then the moment has gone away
From the window The vast quantities of scum
Did not materialize. Only the sterile minuet
Proceeds at an always altered rate
Leading to bad feelings here and there
But the main feeling is safe and out of reach.
Love is different.
It moves, or grows, at the same rate
As time does, yet within time:
The waxing is invisible, and can never be felt
Outside time, as a few things—happiness,
For instance—can. As perennial as time
Is, and as insipid to the tongue, yet it
Is built in another street; such luminescence
As it has, it takes from the idea of itself
Each of us has, and knows not, except
To recognize, and feel secure again about its growing:
I mean that it is a replica
Of itself, which is itself the replica,
Counterfeited from itself, which is something
False, yet true, like the moon, and whose
Earthly reflection is of a truly
Hair-raising solidity, like the earth
Dissolved in the sun, suffused with a kinetic
Purpose it could never have for us
Unless we dreamed it. It is, then,
Gigantic, yet life-size. And
Once it has lived, one has lived with it. The astringent,
Clear timbre is, having belonged to one,
One’s own, forever, and this
Despite the green ghetto that intrudes
Its blighted charm on each of the moments
We called on love for, to lead us
To farther tables and new, surprised,
Suffocated chants just beyond the range
Of simple perception. These, brown
Motes, may unclasp themselves like
Japanese paper flowers at any moment,
Rending themselves into a final
Fixed appreciation of themselves and whatever
They were going to be confronted with
Lest the politicians despair of its ever
Becoming a diamond that gives back the night
Into its smallest box and learns to live
With itself, like a true feeling.
III
But, what is time, anyway? Not,
Not certainly, the faces and pleasures
Encrusted in it, the “beautifully varied streets,”
The wicked taunting us to some kind of action,
Any kind, with hands partially covering
Their faces, to hide or to mock us, or both.
No, these things are part of time,
Or are rather a kind of parallel tide,
A related activity. And the markings?
Some say that the measuring of time
Is a recognition of what it is, but
I think the things that are in it
Are more like it, though not quite it.
Actually what is in it is controlled
And colored by the units of measuring it.
That summer jog you had
A long time ago
Is probably it, it fits so
Neatly over it anyway, nobody
Could ever tell the difference.
And what was said
All afternoon, long afternoons
Ago, whatever it was, and it
Was something special, you know
You really can remember it.
I wanted to forget it but it was like
Not remembering it and having the whole
Force of it brought home to you, and who
Wants that? Who cares, anyway, about
What it is or what it was like?
You must be mad to care. Yes,
I am mad, I think, and I do care.
I can’t help it. I am mad,
And don’t care. But it will not remain
Any more outside of me for all that.
It is the marrow of my thought
That all night I stand up chewing,
Trying to remember things, mostly things
I’
d forgotten, and who
Remembers these? And also
Some things I
Actually remembered, and here I am
Trying to remember them all over again, to have
Them live up to me.
And it is as it was when I was a kid:
The moment stays on, but is
Lacing up its shoelaces or engaged
In some other form of maddening and hard to
Notice activity, but it gets its work done,
And still it can stay it has stayed
Around long enough to count for that
So that it is I who have aged without
Having done anything, certainly nothing
To deserve it, like a lost cause.
I would just love to go
Would love it
And you too want to go, with me,
And there is no reason not to, nothing
Keeping us here, we
Can go out into the street
Where nobody is, no dirt
Any more, and climb to the lower edge of the sky
And wait there, and soon
Someone will come to take care of us.
All I want
Is for someone to take care of me,
I have no other thought in mind,
Have never entertained any.
When that day comes I’ll go gladly
Into whatever situation or room you want me in
To take care of.
And meanwhile I’ll wait, obligingly, full
Of manna and joy, for that to take place
Which it will, soon.
But why you
May ask do I want someone to take care of me
So much? This is why:
I can do it better than anyone, and have
All my life, and now I am tired
And a little bored with taking care of myself
And would like to see how somebody else might
Do it, even if that person falls on their face
In the attempt.
When leaves pass over, and then ice
And finally warm, bottled-up breezes
I’ll notice how it has all seemed the same until now,
This very moment, and as a
Duck takes off into the nether blue,
Find my rationale or whatever, something
Inside these movements all around me that
Enclose me loosely like a cage with the bars
Wide enough apart to walk through
Into the open air, onto God’s road, in the blond,
Shambling sunlight, and look back
After all that, thinking how fortunate
It has all been on the whole, and how, though joy
Has been lacking, and that severely on occasion,
Happiness has not. I must
Make do with happiness, and am glad
To do so, as long as everyone
Is happy and doesn’t mind. The car
Drove back to get me, through miles and miles
Of mud ruts and mangrove swamps, and stopped
And I got in and it drove away
To a slightly less flat land where you
And I can build a new life together on the shore
Several inches above sea level as the blue
Whitecaps on the charging waves come foaming in.
The Americans, with a sigh, never call it
By another word than its name. O
People who loiter by the Pacific,
Whose swaggering insouciance might convince
If left to play, and who can never lie,
Not even from the truth, how is it
With you, nestling all of you on one side?
The buildup predicted by others never
Quite matriculated, and now some of you
Are in this impasse, preparing to stay, while
Others straggle here and there, finding
Food, shelter, deserts, and in the tall
Tales some kindling, an advantage, and
You never look down.
The narrator:
Something you would want here is the
Inexpressible, rage of form
Vs. content, to show how the latter,
The manner, vitiates the thing-in-
Itself that the poem is actually about
And which, for this reason, cannot
Be considered the subject. Living
On the tranquil slope of an inactive volcano
All these days which group themselves
Into decades, consuming
The egg puddings of each one of these days
Is like unto form as subject matter
Perceives it through the cracks in its
Makeshift cell, and knows
There is light and activity outdoors to which
It can never contribute, but of which
It must needs always be aware, and this
Oozing sore is progress, slow
And miserable at times but magnificent
In its conception, in theory, and may never
Be anything more than this, but knows
About itself. Luckily, the object
Keeps making itself known to the opinions
About form and remains strong and warm
Long after it has gone out of fashion
And so never ceases, even in its earliest
Days preceding its demise, to be a runic
Maquette of the ideal poem-construct
Even after it has finally washed its hands of all
Notion of form, pleads ignorance or conflict
Of interest, and releases Barabbas to the
Delighted distraction of the rabble whose
Destiny is always to be of two minds
About everything and will end up on your doorstep
If you don’t watch out:
You private yet public excuse for a still
Active poetasting writer but whether what
Is lasting in your work will last is the
Big question: it’s poetry, it’s extraordinary,
It makes a great deal of sense. It starts out
With some notion and switches to both, yet
The object will be partially perceived by the forms
Around it it is responsible for.
Note that, in the liturgical sense
Of history, the way I see it, we are falling down
In our duty toward the dustman’s spasms, derelict
And decrepit as regards the outside world.
Deduce a spasm? Aye, a very
Insomniac’d tear it down so as to rebuild
And resell it. Tear his tattered ensign
Down? I don’t know, I thought it looked nice
Hanging overhead, though I could
Be wrong. Valentine, I need you,
The mice in the plaster disturb all my reasoning
On this vale, this slope. The outer districts
Were succinct, full of enough plans,
But on the interior was the abysm, no
Invitation available, nothing about
The plodding fever that grew him, and the worries
That came after. No clue.
In industry we are persuaded that we may in some
Connection contribute a certain stone or effort
And this lazily winds away over the hill.
Or say that between the effort and the screws
Some scorpion intruded, and to top
It off a storm interfered with the rescue efforts
Blurring them? What then? What do you make
Of the red traffic light turning green to admit
A few cars farther on in the shuffle when night
Binds the tubing with rain and you
Can see yourself only as you used to be in college?
Make you mine
Valentine
Feelin’ fine too if consumed
With energy to be mad and go on
Confessing even if it means that the sought-after
Absolution be rescinded after a time and those who
Looked silently at you for a while direct
Their gaze downward to the sunlit
Tundra. And you go out to the party
As toes slip into shoes
And I am not just left on the corner
But am as the traveling salesman of a joke
With a permanent hard-on and no luck and
All these samples in this here suitcase. Wanna see ’em?
Otherwise, why, we don’t know too much. Fellow was over
Here recently from the British Isles,
Wanted to see something of how the life goes
On. He never made it back. Well some of us
Enjoy that way too as though we knew
Life was a picnic or parade down under the
Hassles and disrobing, the dust,
But now well we pretend to see otherwise
Into the great blue eyes of concrete that best
Our city, in the time of industry, and so
Panic slowly in the vegetal heart of things
Until told to disconnect the operation.
No wonder so many of us
Get discouraged, know not where to turn.
The truth is that nowhere in Europe,
India or America is this a straight line
Drawn, vertically, from one point to another
So as to connect them and in so doing
Provide a lot of fun and refreshment
For the students so they may never
Feel insecure again. Such a line may exist
But it would be horizontal, like the Northwest Passage,
And not connect people up with anything else.
It’s a wager, and emptiness, and though warm
And the color of baked loaves in the sun
It has no idea of nourishment or where
You should go.
Its idea is that the Latin text
Might also have existed in German or be so close
It doesn’t matter any more and the cottage
Be shut up at the end of summer and be there
Come early or mid-spring, but this
Presupposes a helpless mankind pigeonholed
With a rival deity so that neither can make
The hands of the clock move and it all goes down
In darkness, with the sun. To the supreme
Moment then, but it spreads out in sullenness
Over a vast tidal plain to dissipate in what
It is not even sure is horizon, is nothing but
Images. Earthly inadequacy
Is indescribable, and heavenly satisfaction
Needs no description, but between
Them, hovering like Satan on airless
Wing, is the matter at hand:
The essence of it is that all love
Is imitative, creative, and that we can’t hear it.
Oh, once
A long time ago, in towns and cities
The line was different. We lived
