As We Know

by John Ashbery

  I wanted to do something,

  Commemorate something,

  Not “never” or that day coming up.

  So I offer you everything

  You may ever want, not

  Knowing how I’ll pay the bills, just

  Keeping to the memory of it like larkspur

  Or a bird’s head I once saw in a forest at dusk.

  Lots of them are coming to prepare you

  For this, and if I can’t have you

  I’ll figure out some way out of this

  Until the hour tolls its distinction

  Amid great bravery and truth

  Where men are seen running in and around from all over

  And the rendition of great sonatas

  May then be seen to give back some fitful,

  Momentary spark of “the” truth

  As cedars blacken against the fence and the sky

  Just before slipping through the buttonhole of truth—

  The commonplace, casual occurrence.

  An honest killer would have caught you

  And told you that way, and gone away.

  But the basin of remorse is so vast

  No drop ever increases it, and telling

  Only makes it reverberate

  Inward upon itself, toward the center that is not there.

  And whether you search for nightingales

  Or distress signals on the earth’s clay lid, all

  Is much the same: your face at morning

  And your blue-plaid face at evening with no

  Expression are nevertheless the same

  Until the code is ventilated, and we who have

  Come down with you, to the same root or comma,

  Are new now, but with no difference.

  He would cook up these goulashes

  Make everything shipshape

  And then disappear, like Hamlet, in a blizzard

  Of speculation that comes to occupy

  The forefront for a time, until

  Nothing but the forefront exists, like a forehead

  Of the times, speechless, drunk, imagined

  In all its five shapes, and never in one state

  Of repose, though always disclosed

  And disclosing, keeping itself like a chance

  In the dark, living wholly in a dream

  Sweet reality discovers.

  I wander through each dirty street

  Knowing how painted rooms are bonny,

  Remembering feather beds are soft, and Jack,

  Eating rotten cheese. As the babble

  Of apes in an orchard are the slogans

  That solicit us like pennants in the sky:

  Fools rush into my head, and so I write.

  I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records

  From the interstices of my desirings

  And imaginings, and find the whiteness

  That was there. Already the colors of sleep

  Are fading, a blankness

  Is taking shape, and its magnificent outline

  Washes true like the sound of a French horn,

  And then somehow, sqwunched or

  Scrunched down in the corner, in the folds

  It collects itself, again, and all the differences

  Are differences among rainbows, or adhesions

  In the dance, that dissolve and strengthen

  As it reaches its pitch. Again, ambition is seen

  As no idle thing. Reading the papers

  We are inflamed to emulate it, even as

  There seems nothing wrong with it, and finally

  Vote for it. Impetuously

  We travel on, life seems full of promise,

  And ambition is so recent as to be almost

  Stronger than living, and makes its own

  Definitions and pays for them. Surely

  Life is meant to be this way, solemn

  And joyful as an autumn wood rent by the hunters’

  Horns and their dogs, unmixed with pleasure,

  Turned inside out, violating

  The very name of intimacy, but assured

  Of an easy victory. Time was when it seemed

  Too rich, too filling, but now the lean

  Bones of the November wind are seen as dainty,

  And just sufficient,

  Emblems of the famished year.

  O sun, God’s creation,

  Shine hot for one hour, confounding my enemies

  Or else make them like me. I want to write

  Poems that are as inexact as mathematics. I have been

  Sitting making mudpies, in the sparkling sunlight,

  And the difficulty of giving them away

  Doesn’t matter so long as I want you

  To enjoy them. Enjoy these! You are busy, I know,

  But could find time for this. Some day

  People will remember them—this always happens—

  And you’ll be caught with your pants down.

  Besides, how many streams can you rake

  With your copper rake, without counting;

  How much pouring fog chase away, larks

  And ploughmen delight? In the occupied countries

  You are raised to the statute of a god, no one

  Questions your work, its validity, all

  Are eager only to support it, to give of themselves

  So as to push your crowning effort over the top:

  Never

  Had any such a plebiscite, but you must earn it

  Even so, prepare, purify yourself to be worthy of it

  Although no one will notice. Then, when you

  Are setting, in a blaze of glory, you’ll find

  You have already written about this, about all

  That’s already happened, and everything that could be

  In the future, and won’t mind

  About disappearing behind yon crag

  Which already is grown silent, erect

  With waiting, tense and eager as a bridegroom

  For you to fall alongside its spine:

  “The protector

  Came from the tussock, the son rose up from the bottom.”

  I have heard that in spring the mountains change

  And seldom pay any mind to the sun (who continues,

  Nonetheless, to do good deeds, bringing

  Cowslips and other small plants out of the mould, changing

  The barren shale to faerie, coaxing

  Mica glints out of the flat, unappreciative sidewalks,

  Turning everything around but making it

  Delightful), occupied as they are

  With furthering their own desires, spreading

  Their dominion over the flat, quiet land around them.

  But no one is punished for inattention any more:

  It seems, in fact, to further the enjoyable

  Side of the world’s activities. What seemed

  Reckless, incoherent, even filthy at times

  Is now the shortest distance; everything gets done

  And, more important, ought to be done

  This way, and only in this way,

  For happiness to sustain, and fish to remain

  In the depths, not elbowing the birds of the skies;

  For it all to come right and not be noticed

  Until just after it has slipped by, for the noble

  And wonderful thing it is, so that the other

  Visions may arise and occupy the same space.

  Before long they too

  Turn up in your mind.

  You wonder what the original uses

  Of famine were, after

  We saw the film about it.

  The brine shrimp were brought

  And the fairy pudding placed next to them.

  It’s good though—

  It has meat on it.

  We fucked too long,

  Though, you see.

  Now it’s too late to stay home

  Or go anywhere except to that film
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  We’ve both seen a dozen or more times.

  Of course it’s good—that’s why

  We saw it so often—

  But after a while one feels one has lived it

  And wants to get on with other living experiences.

  Yet we keep returning to it—

  It is good, after all, and we know the plot

  And the characters by now, which makes it

  Ours in a way that living our own lives

  Never does. We know ourselves

  And each other only too well; on the other

  Hand the action is always new, though plotless,

  The same. Toes are again pointed

  Down a sidewalk, spring

  Is in the air and the word “brothel” floats

  Like a ribbon in the sunset, upsetting

  The teen balance that was never anything

  But a continuing collapse, that brought

  Music and minor pleasures, and some

  Nourishment, but always rolled back the conditions

  To that flat, narrow time before the beginning,

  Kind of a sample of the horizon

  Before there was any place for it

  And now that it exists it seems

  Almost tame, or not as ripe

  As we always imagined it would be.

  In the sea of the farm

  The dream of hay whirls us toward

  Horizons like those only

  Imagined, with no space, no groove

  Between the sky and the earth, metallic,

  Unfleshed, as though, as children,

  Each of us might say how good

  He or she is, and afterwards it is forgotten,

  The thought, the very words.

  But there are times when darkness

  Hides this not very real horizon, and it turns

  Steadfast for us. Sprays

  Of trees are imagined there, and they endure

  For a while once daylight has come,

  The stubborn, sticky mixture of daylight.

  If all the retinues of all

  The archdukes stretched away into a powdery

  Infinity, and you stood

  On the top step but one, waiting to advance

  Your argument into the aura, and time suddenly

  At that moment seemed to sag, and the staircase

  Became a giant hammock littered with dead leaves

  And ants, and the horizon of the universe

  Raised it up into something bald and filled

  With unexpressed and inexpressible menace,

  No word of which would ever

  Attest to the configuration of desires

  That had gone into its construction, dark now,

  Absent-minded flowers, reticent birds, and much

  Else that is scarcely present, needing

  No avenue, no way to be born,

  Who would greet you? Which might be

  What you want to tell me: open the door.

  Your hopes and fears, ambitions, inspirations

  Are a closed book to me. And your

  Uneasy acceptance of what doesn’t really matter,

  Like a makeshift latrine, is, well,

  Changed, back into remoteness by your verbs

  Like winking dragonflies that officiate

  So far down near the bottom of “caring”

  As to seem interlopers, themselves

  Displaced by later arrivals

  That fell off the others, are part

  And parcel, but that merely, of

  The old, old wonderful story:

  Grace and linearity

  That take us up and bathe us, changing

  The dirty colors of the little zephyrs

  Into the next best thing: short gaffer,

  Very short roses.

  It goes without saying that I can’t,

  “For the life of me,” figure out why we were both

  Here. You are again listening to Haydn quartets,

  Following them with the score. Afterwards

  I wander all over you. Anyway that is the

  Way I want you, the way things are

  Going to be increasingly.

  “Now to my tragic business.”

  The moon, in a coma, listens nevertheless

  To all that is said. Any word we

  May have ever uttered gets recorded and

  Catalogued, and anybody can go and look them up.

  The storms don’t matter; even when the wind

  Is about to demolish the roof, and the sea

  Is banging on the front door, our words,

  Even whispers, even unuttered thoughts are

  Channeled into this cesspool of oral history.

  You may be wondering about what comes next.

  Never change when love has found its home.

  Compliments of “a friend.”

  But not in our day. It sits

  Open and limited like the yard.

  Yet there are silent beginnings of beginnings,

  Nothing but prayers, though it seems

  That we can now feel with our minds

  Which is someplace between prayers

  And the answer to prayers.

  In all these

  Accessories of going down into day, though polished

  And bristling, the telling of the way

  Still fails to appear. Stopping everyone

  Along the way for news of a long list

  Of people, the field of folk

  Is full of people in gentle raiment

  Of the sun woven with the moon, and smiles

  Half hilarious and half tragic, so that they

  Seem specters of some cosmic romance

  Beyond comedy and tragedy, and their love pours

  Over the dikes and barriers that are no more

  Now that the flood has occurred

  And stopped, a broad and quiet ocean

  Woven of the sun and wind and true

  Kisses that are heartier than love.

  Kind words are like apples of gold

  And pitchers of silver.

  I thought I thought I thought

  In vain

  At last I thought with my name.

  Remember me now

  Remember me ever

  And think of the fun

  We had together.

  A friend.

  I will tell you lovers, it is the little boy or sire

  That has a present smell or word

  For all their meat.

  A little boy was running away

  To be seen no more, who is now seen

  As before, in the abstract and the particular,

  The flesh and the appearance of flesh,

  Who is not unlike the little boy

  Of love, with his mama

  The lady of love, who arranged all this

  And who is good beyond the shadows

  Of evil and corruption others throw

  Into our corner but we are always beside them.

  Some think him mean-tempered and gruff

  But actually his is an occasion for all occasions

  And one can get by calling anything love

  As long as it’s locked up in the Finis

  Of the end, and still come out ahead.

  (This is probably the fourth most important kind of love

  But as long as lovers still look at the moon

  In June, weaving fingers under the moon

  We cannot know what happens here,

  Whether or not we should go away.)

  But I’m against all forms of physical

  Sexual activity—against billy goats, too,

  Never could stand ’em. Which is why

  It’s difficult to get up in public and proclaim

  About my cherished sorrow departing,

  My appetite coming back, since all lovers

  Are shadows projected from behind on the screen

  Of my collective unconscious, eidolons />
  That won’t say yes or no, but keep prodding

  The ground for the treasure buried there.

  One or two a year is all right

  But more than that releases the shadow

  Of throngs of passersby, of the correct object

  And the precise moment in the sea-level street.

  So later we come to abide

  By the state as we remember it

  And in dreams overhear it

  And all our richness of invention

  Is as physic to the evil of the surround

  Which can’t exist until we go after it,

  Prove it by default.

  Therefore I can’t advance too much

  Toward the packed, glittering crowd:

  It dematerializes too soon and my oblivion

  Is the cost of the precise definition there

  Besides which no one would ever want to see it

  In that much detail (warts and all)

  Knowing he would have to come out that way

  Himself one day, and turn his back on all

  He had with such difficulty become,

  A pejorative lover, alone and palely

  Loitering, having forgotten what the object

  Of his affection was, with only the Pavlovian

  Reflex of loving left to try to remind him

  What it was all like one day, how it could have

  Been. And as we realize this, they

  Grow paler but more fixed, more sovereign

  For this day and this hour, are what

  Has been bearing down all along, the sleep

  We have tried without success to ward off

  All day, until the trap

  Of night caves in under us and we emerge

  Pellucid and dry-eyed as the others, beings made of

  Love and time, who are to each other

  What each is to himself.

  I cry in the daytime,

  And in the night season, and am not silent.

  But what shall clean me within?

  The way to nothing

  Is the way to all things. The thoroughfare

  That kept me inside

  Is blocked with thurifers

  That would lead to a different kind of life.

  Yet all behaviors

  Are equal in the eyes of a jade leaf

  Prodded into history

  But with a sense of itself and of society

  Unequal to history.

  History is a forest

  In which a separate, positioned leaf

  Could not occur

  Leading to storms as multitudinous and varied

  As the drops in a single storm

  That flowers by the roadside

  In winter, as white if taken this way

  As an object which the mind can never

  Control, leading to frosted silence

  And cold unregard.

  It is a landmark in a chain of landmarks,

  Never to be harvested.

  The atrocious accident, as ascribed

  In columns of print, refreshes,