by John Ashbery
No one said it would turn out this way
But of course, no one knew, and now most of them
Are dead.
One, however, still looms,
Billboard-size in the picaresque
Night sky of eleven years ago. And whose
Hand is it, placed comically against your throat,
Emerging from a checkered cuff? Because a long time ago
You were promised safe-conduct
From a brief, mild agony
To these not-uninteresting pangs of birth
And so, and so, a landscape always seen through black lace
Became this institution
For you, inflected, as we shall see,
From time to time by discreet nautical allusions
And shreds of decor, to amount
To these handfuls and no other: a reminder
To keep it soft and straight forever as long
As no other pick up your ringing phone.
Play it on any instrument. It is in whack
And ready to do your bidding, though sunk
In the rat-infested heap of rose embers
Of the terminating day. A keepsake.
This has been a remarkable afternoon:
The sky turned pitch-black at some point though there
Was still enough light to see things by.
Everything looked very festive and elegant
Against the inky backdrop. But who cares?
Isn’t it normal for things to happen this way
During the Silver Age, which ours is?
Motifs like the presentation of the Silver Rose
Abound, and no one really pays much attention
To anything at all. People
Are either too stunned or too engrossed
In their own petty pursuits to bother with
What is happening all around them, even
When that turns out to be extremely interesting
As is now so often the case.
You will see them buying tickets
To this or that opera, but how many times
Will they tell you whether they enjoyed it
Or anything? Sometimes
I think we are being punished for the overabundance
Of things to enjoy and appreciate that we have,
By being rendered less sensitive to them.
Just one minute of contemporary existence
Has so much to offer, but who
Can evaluate it, formulate
The appropriate apothegm, show us
In a few well-chosen words of wisdom
Exactly what is taking place all about us?
Not critics, certainly, though that is precisely
What they are supposed to be doing, yet how
Often have you read any criticism
Of our society and all the people and things in it
That really makes sense, to us as human beings?
I don’t mean that a lot that is clever and intelligent
Doesn’t get written, both by critics
And poets and men-of-letters in general
But exactly whom are you aware of
Who can describe the exact feel
And slant of a field in such a way as to
Make you wish you were in it, or better yet
To make you realize that you actually are in it
For better or for worse, with no
Conceivable way of getting out?
That is what
Great poets of the past have done, and a few
Great critics as well. But today
Nobody cares or stands for anything,
Not even the handful of poets one admires, though
You don’t see them quitting the poetry business,
Far from it. It behooves
Our critics to make the poets more aware of
What they’re doing, so that poets in turn
Can stand back from their work and be enchanted by it
And in this way make room for the general public
To crowd around and be enchanted by it too,
And then, hopefully, make some sense of their lives,
Bring order back into the disorderly house
Of their drab existences. If only
They could see a little better what was going on
Then this desirable effect might occur,
But today’s artists and writers won’t have it,
That is they don’t see it that way.
They do see a certain way, and that way
Is interesting to them, but
Doesn’t help your average baker or cheerleader
To see precisely the same way, which
Is the only thing that could rescue them
From the desperate, tangled muddle of their
Frustrated, unsatisfactory living. Seeing things
In approximately the same way as the writer or artist
Doesn’t help either, in fact, if anything, it makes things worse
Because then the other person thinks he
Or she has found out whatever it is that makes
Art interesting to them, the reason
For those diamond tears on the scarlet
Velvet of the banquette at the opera,
And goes on a rampage, featuring his or her emotions
As the banners with a strange device of a new revolution
Of the senses, but it’s doomed
To end in failure, unless that person happens to be
Exactly the same person as the artist who is doing
All this to them, which of course is impossible,
Impossible at any rate in a Silver Age
Wherein a multitude of glittering, interesting
Things and people attack one
Like a blizzard at every street crossing
Yet remain unseen, unknown and undeveloped
In the electrical climate of sensitivities that ask
Only for self-gratification,
Not for outside or part-time help
In assimilating and enjoying whatever it is.
Therefore a new school of criticism must be developed.
First of all, the new
Criticism should take into account that it is we
Who made it, and therefore
Not be too eager to criticize us: we
Could do that for ourselves, and have done so.
Nor
Should it take itself as a fitting subject
For critical analysis, since it knows
Itself only through us, and us
Only through being part of ourselves, the bark
Of the tree of our intellect. What then
Shall it criticize, in order to dispel
The quaint illusions that have been deluding us,
The pictures, the trouvailles, the sallies
Swallowed up in the howl? Whose subjects
Are these? Yet all
Is by definition subject matter for the new
Criticism, which is us: to inflect
It is to count our own ribs, as though Narcissus
Were born blind, and still daily
Haunts the mantled pool, and does not know why.
It’s sad the way they feel about it—
Poetry—
As though it could synchronize our lives
With our feelings about ourselves,
And form a bridge between them and “life”
As we come to think about it.
No one has ever really done a good piece
On all the things a woman carries inside her pocketbook,
For instance, and there are other ways
Of looking out over wide things.
And yet the sadness is already built into
The description. Who can begin
To describe without feeling it?
So many points of view, so many details
That are probably significant. And when
We have finishe
d writing our novel or
Critical essay, what it does say, no matter
How good it is, it merely mocks the idea
Of a whole comprised by all those now mostly invisible
Ideas, ghosts
Of things and reasons for them,
So that it takes over, seizes the glitter
And luminosity of what ought to have been our
Creative writing, even though it is dead
Or was never called to life, and could not be
Anything living, like what we managed
Somehow to get down on the page.
And the afternoon backs off,
Won’t have anything to do with all of this.
Yet the writing that doesn’t offend us
(Keats’ “grasshopper” sonnet for example)
Soothes and flatters the easier, less excitable
Parts of our brain in such a way as to set up a
Living, vibrant turntable of events,
A few selected ones, that nonetheless have
Their own veracity and their own way of talking
Directly into us without any effort so
That we can ignore what isn’t there—
The death patterns, swirling ideas like
Autumn leaves in the teeth of an insane gale,
And can end up really reminding us
How big and forceful some of our ideas can be—
Not giants or titans, but strong, firm
Human beings with a good sense of humor
And a grasp of a certain level of reality that
Is going to be enough—will have to be,
And so lead us gradually back to words
With names we had forgotten, old friends from
Childhood, and then everything
Is forgiven at last, and we
Can sit and talk quietly with them for hours,
Words ourselves, so that when sleep comes
No one is to blame, and no reproach
Can finally be uttered as the lamp
Is trimmed. The tales
Live now, and we live as part of them,
Caring for them and for ourselves, warm at last.
All life
Is as a tale told to one in a dream
In tones never totally audible
Or understandable, and one wakes
Wishing to hear more, asking
For more, but one wakes to death, alas,
Yet one never
Pays any heed to that, the tale
Is still so magnificent in the telling
That it towers far above life, like some magnificent
Cathedral spire, far above the life
Pullulating around it (what
Does it care for that, after all?) and not
Even aiming at the heavens far above it
Yet seemingly nearer, just because so
Vague and. pointless: the spire
Outdistances these, and the story
With its telling, which is like gothic
Architecture seen from a great distance,
Booms on in such a way
As to make us forget the prodigious
Distance of the waking from the
Thing that was going on, in the novel
We had been overhearing, all that time.
Not that writing can transcend life,
Any more than the act of writing can
Outdistance the imagination it feeds on and
Imitates in its ductility, its swift
Garrulity, jumping from line to line,
From page to page: it is both
Too remote and too near to transcend it,
It is it, probably, and this is what
We have awakened only to hear: maybe just
A long list of complaints or someone’s
Half-formed notions of what they thought
About something, too greedy
Even to feed on itself, and therefore
Lost in the muck
Of sleep and all that is forever outside,
Condemned to be told, and never
To hear of itself.
Sometimes a pleasant, dimpling
Stream will seem to flow so slowly all of a
Sudden that one wonders if it was this
Rather than the other that one was supposed to read.
In the charmèd air one
Imagines one hears waltzes, ländler, and écossaises
And concludes that it is literature
That is doing it, and that therefore
It must do it all the time. It works out too well,
The ending is too happy
For it to be life, and therefore it must
Be the product of some deluded poet’s brain: life
Could never be this satisfactory, nor indulge
That truly human passion to be all alone.
And I too am concerned that it
Be this way for you. That you
Get something out of it too.
Otherwise the night has no end.
Otherwise the weeping messiah
Who comforts us on those nights
When truth has flown out the window
Would never place an asterisk
On your heart. Tour whole life
Would be like walking through a field
Of tall grasses, in time with the wind
As it blows. And in old age
There will have been no jump to the barefaced
Old man you then are, only a nudge
And promise of more suppers: some things I have to do.
How is it that you get from this place
To that one only a little distance away
Without anybody’s seeing you do it?
The trip to the basement
Performed unseen, unknown ...
Uncle Fred and his cigars
All my old Mildred Bailey records
And a highly intelligent kangaroo
Riding with me, all of us in the back seat
In our old Hudson.
It doesn’t explain much—
Rituals don’t—
But as frantic as the commotion in nature
Now is, the grand impermanence
Of this storm, impatience
Of the calm skies to start again,
The house stays much the same.
One day a little bit of rust
At the eaves, a bit of tape removed
And its story will have been elsewhere,
Soon removed, like a porch, and the head
Must again sneeze out an idea of flowers.
That music, the same old one, will be born again.
So much for the resident way
Of adding up the drawbacks and the satisfactions
If any are to be found, and
I salute you so as you enjoy
The mellow fecund death of that past.
Ah’m impressed. And should we
Never get together, the deal stands.
We want it for them and we and us
More than ever now that it has dwindled
To a sticky, unsightly root. But now
The present has dried out in front of the fire
And we must resume the flight again.
Someone who likes you first
Comes along. The act is open
And a nation of stargazers begins
To unwrap the fever of forgetting, the while
You sidle next to each other and never
Afterward shall it be a question of these blooms
In that time, of speech heard
In that apartment. Nowhere that the light comes
Can you and he argue the subtle hegemony
Of guilt that loops you together
In the continual crisis of a rood-screen
Pierced here and there with old commercials
Shimmering and shining in the sun.
You are cast down into the lowest place
In t
he universe, and you both love it.
All this time larger and I may say graver
Destinies were being unfurled on the political front
And in the marketplace, important issues
That you are unable and unwilling to understand,
Though you know you ignore them at your peril,
That any schoolchild can recite them now.
Yet somehow it doesn’t bode well that
In your sophistication you choose to disregard
What is so heavy with potential tragic consequences
Hanging above you like a storm cloud
And cannot know otherwise, even by diving
Into the shallow stream of your innocence
And wish not to hear news of
What brings the world together and sets fire to it.
It wasn’t innocence even then, but a desire to
Keep the severe sparkle of childhood for
The sudden moments of maturity that come
Surprisingly in the night, dazzling
By the very singleness of their passage
Like white blossoming trees glimpsed
In the May night, before the tempests of summer
Put an end to all dreams of sailing and hoped-for
Good weather and luck, before the frosts come
Like magic garments. And so
I say unto you: beware the right margin
Which is unjustified; the left
Is justified and can take care of itself
But what is in between expands and flaps
The end sometimes past the point
Of conscious inquiry, noodling in the near
Infinite, off-limits. Therefore
All your story should be phrased so that
Tinkers and journeymen may inspect it
And find it all in place, and pass on
Or suddenly on a night of profound sleep
The thudding of a moth’s body will awaken you
And drag you with it vers la flamme,
Kicking and screaming. And then
What might have been written down is seen
To have been said, and heard, and silence
Has flowed around the place again and covered it.
“The morning cometh, and also the night.”
I’ll dampen you
As I celebrate you, but first
I’ll turn your feet over
And enjoy you with this ever slenderer
Aspen climate, as one in the know would do.
I’ll mouth expressions of yours
And replay your tricycle in the formal walks
And garden beds. Some very pretty views
Can be ascertained now. I’ll not
Put a glove on so you may see the snake
With the cobalt eyes, and bring you offerings
Of olives, bananas, guavas, Japanese persimmons. Furthermore,
I will await you in indolence, so that
The view of the sea will move in slowly
And become the walls of this room.
But it was on this day that
