The Double Dream of Spring

by John Ashbery

  Sideways in pentagonal fields cursive in advance

  Before the fathoming of spring and

  Sound let deep into the flank of occurrence

  As maps lean south and shrivel toward the north.

  It is fine to be in on it, stone markings, always

  And eventually at some limit with a high view

  But cross-country skirtings were part of the next lesson

  That sleep evades, and in him was no parking space

  For looks dragged under windows next time, from boarded-up places

  Speaking no mind into the center of the rout.

  And as day followed day the plainer meaning of it

  Became a constant projected on the emigration.

  The tundra seemed elaborated.

  Then a permanent falling back shapes, signs the residue

  As a tiny wood fence’s the signature of disgust and decay

  On an otherwise concerned but unmoved, specially obtruded hill:

  Flatness of what remains

  And modelling of what fled,

  Decisions for a proper ramble into known but unimaginable, dense

  Fringe expecting night,

  A light wilderness of spoken words not

  Unkind for all their aimlessness,

  A blank chart of each day moving into the premise of difficult visibility

  And which is nowhere, the urge to nowhere,

  To retract that statement, sharply, within the next few minutes.

  For it is as though it turns you back,

  Your eyes through the recent happenings as they advance through you,

  Never satisfied on the way, but

  There is reasonable assurance in the way it is not seen again,

  Banging of the shuttle, repeated swipes of the wind,

  For the afterthought coincides: much of it was intentional.

  It is aloes to be remembered toward the place

  Out of which it grew like forest out of mountain, when later someone says there was no mountain

  Only roads, and stars hanging over them,

  Only a flat stone over the place where it says there is more.

  It is a low game, too tired to sleep,

  Feeling through equipment to the less developed:

  “You’ve gone and mixed me up

  I was happy just bumming along,

  Any old way, in and out, up and down.”

  The passion has left his head, and the head reports.

  And then some morning there is a nuance:

  Suddenly in the city dirt and varied

  Ideas of rubbish, the blue day stands and

  A sudden interest is there:

  Lying on the cot, near the tree-shadow,

  Out of the thirties having news of the true source:

  Face to kiss and the wonderful hair curling down

  Into margins that care and are swept up again like branches

  Into actual closeness

  And the little things that lighten the day

  The kindness of acts long forgotten

  Which give us history and faith

  And parting at night, next to oceans, like the collapse of dying.

  It is all noticed before it is too late

  But its immobility gives no comfort, only chapter headings and folio numbers

  And it can go on being divine in itself

  Neither treasured nor cast down in anger

  For we cannot imagine the truth of it.

  This deaf rasping of branch against branch

  Like a noncommittal sneer among many superimposed chimes

  As we go separate ways

  That have translated the foreground of paths into quoted spaces:

  They are empty beyond consternation because

  These are the droppings of all our lives

  And they recall no past de luxe quarters

  Only a last cube.

  The thieves were not breaking in, the castle was not being stormed.

  It was the holiness of the day that fed our notions

  And released them, sly breath of Eros,

  Anniversary on the woven city lament, that assures our arriving

  In hours, seconds, breath, watching our salary

  In the morning holocaust become one vast furnace, engaging all tears.

  Definition of Blue

  The rise of capitalism parallels the advance of romanticism

  And the individual is dominant until the close of the nineteenth century.

  In our own time, mass practices have sought to submerge the personality

  By ignoring it, which has caused it instead to branch out in all directions

  Far from the permanent tug that used to be its notion of “home.”

  These different impetuses are received from everywhere

  And are as instantly snapped back, hitting through the cold atmosphere

  In one steady, intense line.

  There is no remedy for this “packaging” which has supplanted the old sensations.

  Formerly there would have been architectural screens at the point where the action became most difficult

  As a path trails off into shrubbery—confusing, forgotten, yet continuing to exist.

  But today there is no point in looking to imaginative new methods

  Since all of them are in constant use. The most that can be said for them further

  Is that erosion produces a kind of dust or exaggerated pumice

  Which fills space and transforms it, becoming a medium

  In which it is possible to recognize oneself.

  Each new diversion adds its accurate touch to the ensemble, and so

  A portrait, smooth as glass, is built up out of multiple corrections

  And it has no relation to the space or time in which it was lived.

  Only its existence is a part of all being, and is therefore, I suppose, to be prized

  Beyond chasms of night that fight us

  By being hidden and present.

  And yet it results in a downward motion, or rather a floating one

  In which the blue surroundings drift slowly up and past you

  To realize themselves some day, while you, in this nether world that could not be better

  Waken each morning to the exact value of what you did and said, which remains.

  Parergon

  We are happy in our way of life.

  It doesn’t make much sense to others. We sit about,

  Read, and are restless. Occasionally it becomes time

  To lower the dark shade over it all.

  Our entity pivots on a self-induced trance

  Like sleep. Noiseless our living stops

  And one strays as in a dream

  Into those respectable purlieus where life is motionless and alive

  To utter the few words one knows:

  “O woebegone people! Why so much crying,

  Such desolation in the streets?

  Is it the present of flesh, that each of you

  At your jagged casement window should handle,

  Nervous unto thirst and ultimate death?

  Meanwhile the true way is sleeping;

  Your lawful acts drink an unhealthy repose

  From the upturned lip of this vessel, secretly,

  But it is always time for a change.

  That certain sins of omission go unpunished

  Does not weaken your position

  But this underbrush in which you are secure

  Is its doing. Farewell then,

  Until, under a better sky

  We may meet expended, for just doing it

  Is only an excuse. We need the tether

  Of entering each other’s lives, eyes wide apart, crying.”

  As one who moves forward from a dream

  The stranger left that house on hastening feet

  Leaving behind the woman with the face shaped like an arrowhead,

  And all who gazed upon him wondered at

  Th
e strange activity around him.

  How fast the faces kindled as he passed!

  It was a marvel that no one spoke

  To stem the river of his passing

  Now grown to flood proportions, as on the sunlit mall

  Or in the enclosure of some court

  He took his pleasure, savage

  And mild with the contemplating.

  Yet each knew he saw only aspects,

  That the continuity was fierce beyond all dream of enduring,

  And turned his head away, and so

  The lesson eddied far into the night:

  Joyful its beams, and in the blackness blacker still,

  Though undying joyousness, caught in that trap.

  The Hod Carrier

  You have been declining the land’s

  Breakable extensions, median whose face is half my face.

  Your curved visor’s the supposition that unites us.

  I’ve been thinking about you

  After a dry summer, fucking in the autumn,

  Reflecting among arabesques of speech that arise

  The certain anomaly, the wise smile

  Of winter fitted over the land

  And your activity disappears in mist, or translates too easily

  Into a general puree, someone’s aura or idea of games—

  The stone you cannot perfect, the sharp iron blade you cannot prevent.

  But this new way we are, the melon head

  Half-mirrored, the way sentences suddenly spurt up like gas

  Or sting and jab, is it that we accepted each complication

  As it came along, and are therefore happy with the result?

  Or was it as a condition of seeing

  That we vouchsafed aid and comfort to the seasons

  As each came begging

  And the present, so flat in its belief, so outside it”

  As it maintains, becomes the blind side of

  The fulfillment of that condition; and work, ripeness

  And tired but resolute standing up for one’s rights

  Mean leaning toward the stars

  The way a tree leans toward the sun

  Not meaning to get close

  And the bird walked right up that tree.

  You have reached the point closest to your destination

  O tired beacon

  Dominating the plain

  Yet all but invisible

  To the mind surrounding your purpose

  You are totally subsumed

  The good abstracted, squandered, thrown away

  As it was in the lean time.

  Are these floorboards, to be stared at

  In moments of guilt, as wallpaper can stream away and yet

  You cannot declare it?

  Then each breath is a redeeming feature

  Resolving in alteration

  The inanity of flowers into perfect conditions

  That their mildness can only postpone, not change.

  And surveying the hundredfold record of the summer

  The shapely witness declares herself at last

  Content with the result:

  Whitecaps wincing at every point of the compass

  The justified demands of commerce, difficult departures and all

  Into a hemisphere where no credit is expected

  And the shipping is rendered into its own terms.

  It is what keeps itself

  From going blind

  All aging is perpetual chatter

  On these buff planes, protuberances

  And you are in the wind at night

  And so it is an even darker night

  And death is the prevention of which the cure’s

  Metal polish and sawdust

  Light grinding into your heels.

  An Outing

  “These things … that you are going to have—

  Are you paid specially for them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when it is over, do you insist,

  Do you insist that the visitor leave the room?”

  “My activity is as random as the wind.

  Why should I insist? The visitor is free to go,

  Or to stay, as he chooses.”

  Are you folks just going out for a walk

  And if you are would you check the time

  On your way back? It’s too late to do anything today.

  I would just take a pratfall if I stepped outside that door.

  “I don’t know whether I should apply or nothing.”

  “I think you shd make yr decision.”

  So it was by chance we found ourselves

  Gumshod on the pebbled path, Denmark O Denmark

  Flat, rounded eyes, Denmark Denmark

  Gray parchment landscape Denmark O Denmark

  Unmanageable sky, Denmark that cannot shift

  The faucet drips, the minutes apply, Denmark.

  Some Words

  from the French of Arthur Cravan

  Life is not at all what you might think it to be

  A simple tale where each thing has its history

  It’s much more than its scuffle and anything goes

  Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.

  Each hour has its color and forever gives place

  Leaving less than yon bird of itself a trace.

  In vain does memory attempt to store away

  The scent of its colors in a single bouquet

  Memory can but shift cold ashes around

  When the depths of time it endeavors to sound.

  Never think that you may be allowed, at the end,

  To say to yourself, “I am of myself the friend,”

  Or make with yourself a last reconciliation.

  You will remain the victim of your hesitation

  You will forget today before tomorrow is here

  And disavow yourself while much is still far from clear.

  The defunct days will offer you their images

  Only so that you may read of former outrages

  And the days to come will mar with their complaints

  The splendor that in your honor dejected evening paints.

  Wishing to collect in your heart the feelings

  Scattered in the meadows of misfortune’s hard dealings

  You will be the shepherd whose dog has run away

  You will know even less whence comes your dismay

  Than you know the hour your boredom first saw the light.

  Weary of seeking day you will relish the night

  In night’s dim orchards you will find some rest

  The counsels of the trees of night are best

  Better than those of the tree of knowledge, which corrupts us at birth

  And which you allowed to flourish in the accursèd earth.

  When your most arduous labors grow pale as death

  And you begin to inhale autumn’s chilly breath

  Winter will come soon to batter with his mace

  Your precious moments, scattering them all over the place.

  You will always be having to get up from your chairs

  To move on to other heartbreaks, be caught in other snares.

  The seasons will revolve on their scented course

  Solar or devastated you will perforce

  Be perfumed at their tepid passing, and not know

  Whether their fragrance brings you joy or woe.

  At the moment when your life becomes a total shambles

  You will have to resume your hopeless rambles

  You have left everything behind and you still are eligible

  And all alone, as the gulf becomes unbridgeable

  You will have to earn your daily bread

  Although you feel you’d be better off dead.

  They’ll hurt you, and you’d like to put up some resistance

  Because you know that your very existence

  Depends on others as unworthy of you

  As you are of God, and when it’s
time to review

  Your wrongs, you will feel no pain, they will seem like a joke

  For you will have ceased to suffer under their yoke.

  Whether you pass through fields, towns or across the sea

  You will always retain your melancholy

  And look after it; you will have to think of your career

  Not live it, as in a game where the best player

  Is he who forgets himself, and cannot say

  What spurs him on, and makes him win the day.

  When weary henceforth of wishing to gaze

  At the sinuous path of your strung-out days

  You return to the place where your stables used to tower

  You will find nothing left but some fetid manure

  Your steeds beneath other horsemen will have fled

  To autumn’s far country, all rusted and red.

  Like an ardent rose in the September sun

  You will feel the flesh sag from your limbs, one by one,

  Less of you than of a pruned rosebush will remain,

  That spring lies in wait for, to clothe once again.

  If you wish to love you won’t know whom to choose

  There are none whose love you’d be sorry to lose

  Not to love at all would be the better part

  Lest another seize and confiscate your heart.

  When evening descends on your deserted routes

  You won’t be afraid and will say, “What boots

  It to worry and fret? To rail at my luck?

  Since time my actions like an apple will pluck.”

  You would like of yourself to curtail certain features

  That you dislike, making allowances for this creature,

  Giving that other one a chance to show his fettle,

  Confining yet another behind bars of metal:

  That rebel will soon become an armèd titan.

  Then let yourself love all that you take delight in

  Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage

  That shaped you and is passed on from age to age

  Down to your entity. Remain mysterious;

  Rather than be pure, accept yourself as numerous.

  The wave of heredity will not be denied:

  Best, then, on a lover’s silken breast to abide

  And be wafted by her to Nirvana’s blue shoals

  Where the self is abolished and renounces its goals.

  In you all things must live and procreate

  Forget about the harvest and its sheaves of wheat

  You are the harvest and not the reaper

  And of your domain another is the keeper.

  When you see the lapsed dreams that childhood invents