by John Ashbery
Now it is the turn of the mountain god
but he refuses to play. The blue snow returns. Shopfronts are boarded up.
Still one should never be in a hurry to end, to contrast the ending
with the articulations that have gone before. True, these are merely space,
but one in which lives can take on a single and sparing sharpness
that is an education in itself. This is one life
as we thought it over, and there are other songs, some too true to mention,
others of little weight, optional, cut from most editions
but waiting silently in place where they are expected.
The story falls, mountains conspire, brooks hesitate,
the storm endures.
THE WHITE SHIRT
Suddenly all is quiet again.
I want to talk about something.
It’s not that easy. Pay no attention.
No amount of conservation affects
the wrinkled gourd. The dry shore.
A combustion engine
means it’s not working.
Thing of the past,
you in your limits,
growing,
my working place.
The band is up.
But if it wasn’t for changes,
where would we go? Just
having the illusion is enough.
But charge them for it;
serve immediately.
BAKED ALASKA
I/
It will do. It’s not
perfect, but it will do
until something better comes along.
It’s not perfect.
It stinks. How are we
going to get out of having it
until something comes along, some ride
or other? That will return us
to the nominative case, shipshape and easy.
O but how long are you going to wait
for what you are waiting for, for
whatever is to come? Not
for long, you may be sure.
It may be here already.
Have you checked the mailbox today?
Sure I have, but listen.
I know what comes, comes.
I am prepared
to occupy my share of days,
knowing I can’t have all of them. What is, is
coming over here to find you
missing, all or in part. Or you read me
one small item out of the newspaper
as though it would stand for today.
I refuse to open your box of crayons. Oh yes, I know
there may be something new in some combination
of styles, some gift in adding the addled
colors to our pate. But it’s just too mush
for me. It isn’t that I necessarily
set out on the trail of a new theory
that could liberate us from our shoes as we walked.
It’s rather that the apartment comes to an end
in a small, pinched frown of shadow. He walked
through the wood, as a child. He will walk
on somebody’s street in the days that come after.
He’s noted as a problem child, an ignoramus;
therefore why can you not accept him in
your arms, girdled with silver and black
orchids, feed him everyday food?
Who says he likes cuttlebone?
But you get the idea, the idea
is to humor him for what vexations
may hatch from the stone attitude
that follows and clears the head, like a sneeze.
It’s cozy to cuddle up to him,
not so much for warmth as that brains
are scarce, and two will have to do.
It takes two to tango,
it is written, and much
in the way of dragons’ teeth after that,
and then the ad hoc population that arises
on stilts, ready to greet or destroy us, it
doesn’t matter which, not quite yet, at least.
Then when the spent avenger
turns tail you know it had all to do with
you, that discharge of fortunes
out of firecrackers, like farts. And who’s to say
you don’t get the one that belongs to you?
But he speaks, always, in terms of perfection,
of what we were going to have
if only he hadn’t gotten busy and done something about it, yea,
and turned us back into ourselves
with something missing. And as oarsmen
paddle a scull downstream with phenomenal speed,
so he, in his cape, queries:
Is the last one all right? I know
I keep speaking of the last one, but is it all right?
For only after an infinite series
has eluded us, does the portrait
of the boy make sense, and then such a triangular one:
he might have been a minaret, or a seagull.
He laid that on the car’s radiator
and when you turned around it is gone.
II/
Some time later, in Provence,
you waxed enthusiastic about the tail
piece in a book, gosh how they
don’t make them like that in this century, any more.
They had a fiber then that doesn’t exist now.
That’s all you can do about it.
Sensing this, in the sopping diaspora, many a tanglefoot
waits, stars bloom at scalloped edges
of no thing, and it begins to
bleed, like a bomb or bordello.
The theme, unscathed,
with nothing to attach it to.
But like I was saying, probably some of us were encouraged
by a momentary freshness in the air
that proved attractive, once we had dwelt in
it, and bathed for many years
our temples in its essence. Listen, memory:
do this one thing for me
and I’ll never ask you again for anything else:
just tell me how it began! What
were the weeds that got caught in the spokes
as it was starting up, the time the brakeshaft split
and about all the little monsters that were willing to sit
on the top of your tit, or index finger.
How in the end sunshine prevailed—
but what was that welling in between?
those bubbles
that proceeded from nowhere—surely there must be a source?
Because if there isn’t it means that we haven’t paid
for this ticket, and will be stopped at the exit-gate
and sent back on a return journey through ploughed fields
to not necessarily the starting place, that house
we can hardly remember, with the plangent
rose-patterned curtains.
And so in turn he who gets locked up is lost
too, and must watch a boat nudge the pier
outside his window, forever, and for aye,
and the nose, the throat will be stopped
by absolutely correct memories of what did
we think we were doing when it all began happening,
down the lanes, across vales, out into the open city street.
And those it chooses can always say
it’s easy, once you learn it, like a language,
and can’t be dislodged thereafter.
In all your attractive worldliness, do you consider
the items crossed off the shopping list,
never to breathe again until the day
of bereavement stands open and naked like a woman
on a front porch, and do those you hobnob
with have any say or leverage in the matter?
Surely it feels like a child’s feet propel us along
until everyone
can explain.
Hell, it’s only a ladder: structure
brought us here, and will be here when we’re
honeycombs emptied of bees, and can say
that’s all there is to say, babe; make it a good one
for me.
III/
And when the hectic
light leaches upward into rolls of dark cloud,
there will no longer be a contrast between thinking
and daily living. Light will be something even,
if remorseful, then. I say, swivel
your chair around, something cares, not the lamps purling
in the dark river, not the hot feet on the grass,
nor the cake emerging from the oven, nor the silver
trumpets on the sand: only a lining
that dictates the separation of this you from this some other,
and, in memorializing, drools. And if the hospice
gets over you this will be your magpie, this old hat,
when all is said, and done. No coffee, no rolls—
only a system of values, like the one printed
beside your height as it was measured as you grew
from child to urchin to young adult
and so on, back into the stitched wilderness
of sobs, sighs, songs, bells ringing, athirst
for whatever could be discerned in the glacier:
tale, or tragedy, or talc, that backlit
these choices before we learned to talk,
and so is a presence now, a posture like a chimney
that all men take to work with them
and that all see with our own eyes just
as the door is shutting, O shaft of light, O excellent, O irascible.
PRIVATE SYNTAX
The obligation I have assumed is an unprepossessing one.
I’ll be glad to get back to the city of painted scenery
and horse-drawn carts, before resuming the march toward
new standards of equality. Rain washes in the chimney;
the immense task-force that drew us out into unwise confidences
repeats the crescendo in neon: this is about as sanguinary
as it gets, so why tremble on the edge? Leap, if you must,
only don’t blame the processus for what you brought on yourself,
tarring others too with the brush of a rabid potential music
that cares for itself and dislikes oil-aureoled puddles
as much as it does human experimentation. Whose style degrades your
ruminating on it all until you think you’ve come up with something:
anything, don’t share it. Don’t be special, silly or civil.
In time grapes fatten. Waves accept one more chore, or shore,
and everything gets done, is distributed equally into your plan
of reducing the workload and actually making some money, for a change.
NOT NOW BUT IN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES
Anyway, sleep came that day
not so that you’d notice
what was silhouetted against what—was it the pillow or the bags
over by that glass of water?
I mean we’re not getting into androgyny?
You better believe it. Those towers say
the gift of day is wholesale
to men
under the awning, the annoyed shopkeeper’s
gesture of putting something right
after you’ve touched it can be
believed
No it was an altogether more interesting case.
We often said throw out the baby with the bathwater
eavesdroppers seldom hear good of themselves
the plant stinks
lick honey through a cleft stick.
Other than that it is no premise to you
in time it will be calm be gay
stay away from others’ questions
they will have you before time too
with the pilgrim’s classic good taste
I’m spattered I am brunch
I know how to solve
you I love you
with that the cat
walked last into an open barrier
neither time nor spires were demeaning
I know I planned
it me to be
all over you
I thank a thousand dunces for this webbed, precious
gift of knowledge
to no man’s height I am authorized
to stay here after the handcuffs
and the lard I am chilled
by the reflection
of you
and the stain stays
It was on the beautiful part
must now be read with it
I am all apple
to thank
you
No one knows what we do when we’re apart
A veil veins the days of our separate living
when we’re in trouble we’re back in class
but now to do those tedious sums
requires having loved and in the course of it
shrugged
and if they came by that schoolhouse on such-and-such a day
everything would be normal from the dozing stove
to the pillar of milk on the door
and we should all get together afterward
put our other concerns
on the table
and we should all french kiss get elected
not to be trouble
to stand up in reason’s roar
IN ANOTHER TIME
Actually it was because you stopped,
but there was no need to,
the forest wasn’t too dark, and yet,
you stopped and then went on a little way
as though to embarrass the idea of stopping.
By then the everything
was involved in night:
cars were discharging patrons in front of theaters
where light swelled, then contracted
into tiny slivers. Then listened.
A kind of powdered suburban poetry fits
the description, and isn’t
precisely it. There was no briskness,
yet things got quickly done.
The cartoon era of my early life
became the printed sheaves and look:
what’s printed on this thing?
Who knows what it’s going to be?
Meanwhile it gasps like a fish on a line.
It is no doubt a slicker portrait
than you could have wished, yet all
the major aspects are present:
there you bent down under the waterfall
as though to read little signs
in the moss and it all came to life
but quietly. There is no way to transcribe it.
WITHERED COMPLIMENTS
Have a care lest
the jewelled words of others
force you to act, you too: “Delicious.
I love you. Goodbye.” For in that autumn
after speech strange desires stir.
It is not enough
to have kept one’s hands to oneself,
not enough to see them cheating
and take no action. It is not enough,
finally, to turn
and walk back to the house
where disappointed parents wait, not
enough to smile through abuse and gather them
into the big, hectic embrace.
These days there are other worries to assess.
How did that band of shrubbery grow so sharp
that the rest of the landscape is dim,
pleading ignorance? And the arborist has other
things on his mind, as does the land-surveyor.
If you too could see that far out to sea
your forces might crumble. They, though,
take it in stride, but that too might be a warning:
earth, air
, tire, water,
let all stand, be around
as much as we wrap around them
at day’s outer limits.
A kind of slow afternoon here, too.
The aftershock holds no surprises.
THE WIND TALKING
Faithful I keep coming over to address the issues,
the ills no man can stomach, or anything that feels warm,
less bumptious and froward perhaps, speeding,
on wounded calendar, and faithful you coming to me ouch
plans pleasure no person can resist, the time
to roll out of bed, run out the white door, into the sickness
of the apt. Approach. Wait—
too many trees are tied to this, for desire’s
ambitions to become known. I’ll say to you
how usually around you are and my coming frequently
fits. Young warriors are aghast—no one
had foreseen it. That just keeps making book, into play,
the play of the weather, where snowballs flew across the stage.
The cast was furious. Don’t explain, there’s nothing you can do
except stay out of harm’s way, waiting, in a doorway—
I like you here, and by the woodpile, and think
it’s after something, but no one came. And the door was slightly ajar,
too, it could be considered closed. Some welcome! Maybe
you are older and more spirited than I think, let’s
have a try, go on, the crab missile told
how it was all just plain dust and guts. Any can hold him,
I’ve tried, and now you are back. The volume
of his chant extended me, to be with you, falling off, in the life.
Night promontories can be sticky there is a whole other suite of
glabrous thingamabobs adhering to the minutes of my vacuum.
Then to get down and crawl it, into the unimagined spaces that
were, it’s true, there. I still address it. Like a lost man.
The oldest sewer in captivity. I can shrink it too,
and desperately bawling you knows no man’s coming to lick it,
be beside it, extrapolate us on the ledge. We’re caring.
Shoo, that’s all-important now. Under the legs
of this chair I can see into the runnels. Midnight’s near.
Let’s doff with the clothes, lay on burlap
over granite. Ssh. He hears. The mouse’s wits list
all somebody isn’t going to tell us about the improbable
financial backing of the adventure just as it sinks. The lights
go out at sea. Try a waltz then.
The disease of timing’s etched itself into the very skull
