by John Ashbery
don’t suit her teal, rust and eggshell color scheme.
Of course, I was a buyer when she was still on the street
peddling the Communist Youth weekly. I have a degree
in marketing. Her boyfriend thinks I’m old-fashioned.
Well, I guess I do have an old-fashioned mentality.
What kind of a mentality
causes men to commit suicide in their air-conditioned glass boxes?
It has been a life of adjustments. I adjusted to the postwar boom
though it broke up my family. Some took their honor to the mountains,
to live on wood and water. But the investment years
wrought havoc with the landscape. Everything is modular now, even the trees.
Under the dizzying parabolas of the railroad bridge, where the thud
of laundry mallets used to resound, the swiftly flowing
current is like green cream, like baize unfit for fulling.
So old are the ways,
for lunch one might select a large smelly radish.
In the streets, as always, there is a smell of frying fish
no one notices. The rain cannot make up its mind.
Other people like it other ways.
I need to interact with postal employees, civil servants, that sort of thing.
Just being asleep isn’t enough.
I must cry out against injustice in whatever position
sleep overtakes me. Only then will I have understood what the world
and servants mean by self-abolishment, the key, it is said,
to success. To stand and contemplate the sea
is to comprehend part of the package. What we need, therefore,
is market gardens bringing a sense of time with them,
of this time, honed to razor-sharpness. Yet the whole
scheme is invisible to any shareholder, and so the feeling
lessens, the idea that a composite portrait
may not be so important after all takes over like the shoulder
of a mill-wheel, slogging patiently under water, then back
to the zenith, where the watchword presumably is.
In schools they teach things like plus and minus
but not in the gorge, not in boiling mud.
Area residents were jolted to find what in essence
was a large swamp, pythons and all, in their communal front yard.
To me, this is insensate. I cannot stand the wind at my back
making of me nothing, to be handed
over, in turn, to this
man, this man. For though he weathered patiently
the name, the one that occurs to all of us, he went out
and came in, not in the best interests of abundance;
not, it seems, being anything but about to fall.
Here’s a paradox for you: if the men are segregated
then why are the women not?
If the rich can survive dust-storms thanks to their red-and-gold liveried
postilions, then you are playing with an alphabet here: nothing
you invent can be a plenipotentiary,
turn itself inside-out, radiate
iron spokes at the mini-landscape, and so side with a population
of bears, who knows? Who knows how much there can be
of any one thing if another one stops existing? And the word you give to this
man, this man, is cold,
fossil fuel.
One snorts in the laundry, another
is broken beside the bed. A third is suspended
in a baobab for all the sins
no one ever knew, for sins of omission are like pearls
next to the sin of not knowing, and being excused
for it. So it all comes round
to individual responsibility and awareness,
that circus of dusty dramas, denuded forests and car dealerships, a place
where anything can and does happen, and hours and hours go by.
A DRIFTWOOD ALTAR
I’ll tell you what it was like:
If you could afford it, you could probably have had it,
no questions asked. If it ran well, hugged the road well,
cupped your body like a loose-fitting suit, there was only
the down payment; the rest is future memories.
Of all those who came near him at this stage, only
a few can describe him with any certainty: a drifter
was the consensus, polite with old people,
indifferent to children, extremely interested in young adults,
but so far, why remember him? And few did,
that much is certain. I caught up with him
on a back porch in Culver City, exchanged the requisite
nod, shirt biting into the neck. How is it with you and some
who have no meaning, to whom nothing pertains,
yet the emptiness is always with you,
crowding out sadness, a drum
to which the pagan is alerted, glances are exchanged,
and someone, whom later no one can recall, slips out the side door?
In the bathroom there was considerable embarrassment.
One had taken off without notice, and in the sludge
that washes up on the beach are papers to be signed,
seals to be affixed. O why in this case bother a stranger, there are
enough of us to oversee the caring, the docketing; there is even
warmth on these chilly evenings of late winter, a no-season, remembering
how hot and sharp it was only a few seasons ago
when they wore their coats such-and-such a length
and cars drove by, even as they do now in certain
precincts where the roads are washed and small, trivet-shaped flowers
appear a moment and are gone, to appease the musk-god, most certainly,
and people spill out of lobbies and their greetings thicken like silt
in the runoff from a glacier and it is the standard attitudes
that are struck, there is no cry, no escape from them?
O certainly one of you must have known all this,
had it plotted for him ahead of time and said nothing: certainly
one of you runs down to the road with the news, or to get help, perhaps.
Then the idol winks and pirogues with their slanting
rows of oarsmen are seen departing backwards with undue haste.
It is time to think of spring and in pockets of not extreme despair
or under the threat of a ragged-looking but benevolent cloud, a thought
occurs: we weren’t always like this, something seemed to intervene
about halfway here; at any rate a great deal of action
scrapes what we are doing into shape, for the time being. Though I am lost
I can see other points on the island, remains of picnics nearer
than one had thought, and closer still the one who comes
to resolve it all, provided you sign a document
absolving others from their eternal responsibility, swearing
that you like this light, these birds, this rattling credo
as familiar as a banging shutter, and above all, promising not
just to go about your business but to do the thing, see it drained, emptied,
a box in which four seasons will again fit
just as they did once before fire took the sky
and airplanes in their spotted plumage were seen to waver, and sink, drifting
on the wind’s tune that gets in cracks here, the same
old bore, the thing already learned.
For it is indecent to last long:
one shot of you aghast in the mirror is quite enough; fog mounts
gnarled roots of the trees and one could still
stop it in time. There has to be no story, although it is
bedtime and the nursery animals strike expectant, sympathetic poses.
And then in a quiet but tense moment the crossed
identities are revealed, the rightful heir stands in the doorway.
True, it is only a picture, but someone framed and hung it;
it is apposite. And when too many moods coincide, when all windows
give on destruction, its curfew anchors us
in logic, not reprehensible anymore, not even exemplary,
though emblematic, as some other person talking in an old car would be.
POEM AT THE NEW YEAR
Once, out on the water in the clear, early nineteenth-century twilight,
you asked time to suspend its flight. If wishes could beget more than sobs
that would be my wish for you, my darling, my angel. But other
principles prevail in this glum haven, don’t they? If that’s what it is.
Then the wind fell of its own accord.
We went out and saw that it had actually happened.
The season stood motionless, alert. How still the drop was
on the burr I know not. I come all
packaged and serene, yet I keep losing things,
I wonder about Australia. Is it anything like Canada?
Do pigeons flutter? Is there a strangeness there, to complete
the one in me? Or must I relearn my filing system?
Can we trust others to indict us
who see us only in the evening rush hour
and never stop to think? O I was so bright about you,
my song bird, once. Now, cattails immolated
in the frozen swamp are about all I have time for.
The days are so polarized. Yet time itself is off-center.
At least that’s how it feels to me.
I know it as well as all the streets in the map of my imagined
industrial city. But it has its own way of slipping past.
There was never any fullness that was going to be;
you stood in line for things, and the soiled light was
impenitent. Spiky was one adjective that came to mind,
yet for all its raised or lowered levels I approach this canal.
Its time was right in winter. There was pipe smoke
in cafés and outside the great ashen bird
streamed from lettered display-windows, and waited
a little way off. Another chance. It never became a gesture.
CENTRAL AIR
Not all the buds will open, this year or any year.
But the frame of the tree discovers this is how
what goes together gets woven together. Relief
is the thing here, the key
to all aspirations, including my own—what
do I mean, “including my own”?
Just that the shark gets tired after a few sips
of potential victims and dives off deep into
the underbelly of the sea. That signals are crossed.
That the fairies bloom in boxer shorts.
All right, but what about today,
the mystical leavening process that never occurs,
leaving us flat as crepes? How do I get
from there to here with only one side of me showing?
I can’t take my pants off, that is a revolutionary
sin, akin to wiggling sideways. And this gum or
latex keeps me chained to it. There are so many floors
in this building I feel we shall never get down,
or that in the process I shall become a secret gourd
fit only for haruspication. Does that get indexed?
Anyhow, it’s a downhill process.
Once that gets realized we can turn
into our parents, joining hands with them
just as the fatal drumroll is unsealed.
At that point a cat jumps out of the woodwork
to say it’s all a mistake, how it’ll await
your reaction as eagerly as fur takes on the aura of mist,
and goldfish turn away.
Too, some other peccadillo is missing,
which turns out to be a lucky coincidence
leading to an introduction to a memorialist
who has just turned the pages of a thrilling romance
in which a king is cuckolded and diamonds get turned into tears.
But that is all right that gets told about you;
it butters the toast, as they say in Peoria.
Yet you—here in this trattoria—
how did you get there?
Fifteen seconds ago I was no longer living.
But that’s all right. You see it peps you up
to suddenly have a new book that you
are reading, happily, as print darts across pages
like larks across a field. Now, put it down.
There is someone here who says he or she knows you.
Everyone out of the house!
It was only a game of witch-tag, after all.
The spinach sky, reflected in the sea’s
precise excremental tone, is what we have:
peeling posters in an old resort
announcing races on a certain July 25th.
Did we have to go? Here was more color, more options,
more reins to take, more flugel notes to be involved in.
There is nothing but business, and a businessman’s
sand-colored suit, how he looked at you,
not quite sure how to take the grease-spots on your front,
yet unsure that a vacuum cleaner could remove them.
In time we just drifted apart,
and that says a lot—
says it above the drifting sound of the main, the leather breakers.
And in time we two are here.
Just as Jack had made sure that his friend Cordelia was out
and was preparing to ring the front doorbell a fleet
of blue and yellow airplanes, like frenzied butterflies,
attacked the outpost in the Falkland Islands where some
believe a secret is immured that shall save us.
But nobody ever came. Jack returned to the city where he now lectures.
As for Cordelia, it was all over in a few minutes—
she guessed that the gasp meant fiction, and proceeded
to take the necessary measures, and the sun was again wooed out
of the woods, happy to accept the throne if it
were offered, happy to retreat into senility if it were not:
it doesn’t matter, it’s just the way, the other way things happen,
that brings one regularly to the dentist’s waiting room
with its large, appealing magazines. Meanwhile …
THE YOUTH’S MAGIC HORN
The gray person disputes the other’s clothes-horse stature
just send us some water maybe
herding him onto the escalator for a last roll
and bitter, bitter is its taste
We don’t pay contributors
just send us some water maybe
We’ll talk about the new flatness
and bitter, bitter is its taste
I’ll probably be sleeping with you sometime between now and next week
just send us some water maybe
I haven’t made a threat that the army hasn’t carried out
and bitter, bitter is its taste
Meaningless an April day hungers for its model a drawstring
just send us some water maybe
Billboards empty of change rattle along beside
and bitter, bitter is its taste
Somewhere between here and the Pacific the time got screwed up
just send us some water maybe
but my spelling, as always, is excruciatingly correct
and bitter, bitter is its taste
and I welcome intrusions like the sun
just send us some water maybe
and all around us aquifers are depleted, the heat soars,
an
d bitter, bitter is its taste.
First in dreams I questioned the casing of the gears the enigma presented
You’re a pain in the ass my beloved
The twa corbies belched and were gone, song veiled sky that day
I have to stop in one mile
The century twitched and spewed gnomes from its folds
You’re a pain in the ass my beloved
The mule-gray pilgrim was seen departing
I have to stop in one mile
I never knew the name for this brand of contumely
You’re a pain in the ass my beloved
Believe me I wanted to play the shores are still beautiful
I have to stop in one mile
Here shall we sup and infest sleep for the night
You’re a pain in the ass my beloved
Morning will surprise us with winds like variable coins
I have to stop in one mile
You’re the truth in my cup, violet in the edge of memory
You’re a pain in the ass my beloved
Retrieve me at my dying moment so shall our hearts decay
I have to stop in one mile
Remember the stone that sits beside you—
You’re a pain in the ass my beloved
Sometimes they come for you and forget
I have to stop in one mile
BRUTE IMAGE
It’s a question of altitude, or latitude,
Probably. I see them leaving their offices.
By seven they are turning smartly into the drive
To spend the evening with small patterns and odd,
Oblique fixtures. Authentic what? Did I say,
Or more likely did you ask is there any
Deliverance from any of this? Why yes,
One boy says, one can step for a moment
Out into the hall. Spells bring some relief
And antique shrieking into the night
That was not here before, not like this.
This is only a stand-in for the more formal,
More serious side of it. There is partial symmetry here.
Later one protests: How did we get here
This way, unable to stop communicating?
And is it all right for the children to listen,
For the weeds slanting inward, for the cold mice
Until dawn? Now every yard has its tree,
Every heart its valentine, and only we
Don’t know how to occupy the tent of night
So that what must come to pass shall pass.
OF DREAMS AND DREAMING
Tell me more about that long street. Actually we’re overextended;
