Can You Hear, Bird: Poems

by John Ashbery

  reached the proper consistency, better still is it to join the stampede

  away from it once it’s finished. Which, as of now,

  it is. Wait a minute! You told us eternal flux

  was the ordering principle here, and in the next breath you disavow

  open-endedness. What kind of clucks

  do you take us for, anyway? Everyone knows that once something’s finished,

  decay sets in. But we were going to outwit all that. So

  where’s your panacea now? The snake oil? Smoke and mirrors? Diminished

  expectations can never supplant the still-moist, half-hesitant tableau

  we thought to be included in, and to pursue

  our private interests and destinies in, till doomsday. Well, I

  never said my system was foolproof. You did too! I did not. Did too!

  Did not. Did too. Did not. Did too. Hell, I

  only said let’s wait awhile and see what happens, maybe

  something will, and if it doesn’t, well, our personal

  investment in the thing hasn’t been that enormous, you crybaby;

  we can still emerge unscathed. These are exceptional

  times, after all. And all along I thought I was pointed

  in the right direction, that if I just kept my seat

  I’d get to a destination. I knew the instructions were disjointed,

  garbled, but imagined we’d eventually make up the lost time. Yet one deadbeat

  can pollute a whole universe. The sensuous green mounds

  I’d been anticipating are nowhere to be seen. Instead, a dull

  urban waste reveals itself, vistas of broken masonry, out of bounds

  to the ordinary time traveler. How, then, did he lull

  us, me and the others, into signing on for the trip?

  By exposing himself, and pretending

  not to see. Solar wind sandpapers the airstrip,

  while only a few hundred yards away, bending

  hostesses coddle stranded voyagers with canapés

  and rum punch. To have had this in the early stage,

  not the earliest, but the one right after the days

  began to shorten imperceptibly! And one’s rage

  was a good thing, good for oneself and even

  for others, at that critical juncture. Dryness

  of the mouth was seldom a problem. Winking asides would leaven

  the dullest textbook. Your highness

  knows all this, yet if she will but indulge

  my wobbling fancies a bit longer, I’ll … Where was I? Oh, and then

  a great hurricane came, and took away the leaves. The bulge

  in the calceolaria bush was gone. By all the gods, when

  next I saw him, he was gay, gay as any jackanapes. Is

  this really what you had in mind, I asked.

  But he merely smiled and replied, “None of your biz,”

  and walked out onto the little peninsula and basked

  as though he meant it. And in a funny kind of way, the nifty

  feeling of those years has returned. I can’t explain it,

  but perhaps it means that once you’re over fifty

  you’re rid of a lot of decibels. You’ve got a tiger; so unchain it

  and then see what explanations they give. Walk through

  your foot to the place behind it, the air

  will frizz your whiskers. You’re still young enough to talk through

  the night, among friends, the way you used to do somewhere.

  An alphabet is forming words. We who watch them

  never imagine pronouncing them, and another opportunity

  is missed. You must be awake to snatch them—

  them, and the scent they give off with impunity.

  We all tagged along, and in the end there was nothing

  to see—nothing and a lot. A lot in terms of contour, texture,

  world. That sort of thing. The real fun and its clothing.

  You can forget that. Next, you’re

  planning a brief trip. Perhaps a visit to Paul Bunyan

  and Babe, the blue ox. There’s time now. Piranhas

  dream, at peace with themselves and with the floating world. A grunion

  slips nervously past. The heat, the stillness are oppressive. Iguanas …

  Twilight Park

  Surely the lodger hadn’t returned yet.

  He had, but she hadn’t heard him.

  He was waiting five steps below the landing:

  a black cloth in one black-gloved hand,

  a band of light from the streetlamp like masking tape

  across his eyes. He wanted to write something that would sell,

  and this seemed the only way.

  Desperate are the remedies

  when one is broke, and no longer all that young or handsome.

  Attention, secondary characters, and that means you,

  Edith Fernandez: The snow is no longer pallid enough

  to sum up your footfalls. One is ever so impatient;

  now the tape falls, now carnival music

  bashes in the front door. One can never be wholly

  right, or wrong: catsup or ketchup? We must reread this.

  The ending is considered particularly fine.

  Umpteen

  In this childhood you can

  sort of tell by manners, like tomatoes,

  who looked to be—may be—

  like cute monsters who don’t go away

  but are never any trouble,

  but what’s behind it, this anything?

  Is anything behind what we say

  when we are not alone, not too far apart,

  otherwise constricted?

  Like a novel read on shipboard

  or an old play with complicated stage directions

  that may never have been carried out.

  Perhaps the snow scene was too difficult,

  the bison stampede too compromising.

  We wake and are physical, the morning and

  a thousand nerve endings are chiding,

  clamoring … and all for what?

  These files have nothing on you.

  What the Plants Say

  Don’t cry it’s lentil soup!

  Kind doll rush us away

  to a situation where the hay is mortgaged.

  It was in fact time for a roll in the hay

  so beautifully reflected in the color Polaroid

  in the estate agent’s window, but it

  wasn’t time to go. And she channels us

  out over the silver plain’s mush—

  no wonder everybody wanted Karelia,

  chiggers and all, and then it was

  time, time for dusk.

  If only one outrageous jeweler thought it

  why then it must be true. A Cadillac

  with a platinum pretzel hood ornament—

  why not! You and all

  you’re taking me to must be true,

  and silent, bodacious. That’s the way

  I like ’em—mystery girls

  with buttermilk braids and a microchip of plain

  caring, over the deserted wall.

  So much rubbish! or trash …

  Well, the bird flew down the well

  and that was the last ointment anyone wanted.

  For sure we got to go. Now’s

  the time, Ida.

  When All Her Neighbors Came

  the most beautiful combination appeared

  on the game board. Normally we don’t do these things

  to each other. There’s always a little kissing,

  ha ha. Of that you may be sure. Yes, but mostly

  they don’t go round together, tethered to a median

  that takes itself for the Judgment. Well I can’t be

  picking apples and playing the piano simultaneously,

  now, can I? A withered little bird applauds. Some day,

  it says,
you may go back to the glasshouse and fiddle

  what we all were taught, from day one. Your ale-colored

  shirt is only an onus. Inside the others are dry.

  The “give and take” of the other schools

  isn’t what I had in mind, thank you. A snake,

  perfect in its horror, is. And the bondsmen drift off,

  the decision buried in papers for a century or two,

  and we, why then we are too, frugal of spirit,

  reacting to the latest news. This lady of costmary

  is the essential spoon. We may live more patently,

  more expectantly, now.

  Where It Was Decided We Should Be Taken

  Your name here invisible as a headache

  starts it off again and we are rolling

  helplessly between the trees—we should

  have seen it coming, but not many

  are able to do just that. So we

  dusted off our knees it was nice

  to hear from you again over so many moons

  with stars in them and now it has

  become time for you to become comfortable again

  which is not romantic as hydrangeas

  aren’t romantic until you imagine

  a shed for them to be in to be in

  the darkness like lilies, overspending

  their light it seems, always on the carpet

  for something, on the incoming tide

  that many faces surround.

  Say it was

  in some burrow you could hear planes overhead

  but nothing was nasty this time, everybody

  wanted to contribute to a general effort

  which was being made

  by a general on the other side of Kit Carson country.

  Did I tell you about my hobby? It’s—

  Well, we can talk about my dreams if you wish.

  I had a good one the other night

  when everything was still

  and in the morning I awoke with a red nightcap

  on, really a dunce cap, of which

  no one has ever seen one. I have a friend who

  wants to collect them for a certain room in a

  castle. But he can’t.

  There aren’t any.

  Another day I was out with Miss Peevish

  paying calls, it seems like nobody’s home anymore

  and you have to walk so far to leave a card

  over a stile and then a frog’s in the

  middle of the path—“Confrontational,”

  she murmured. If only they asked one.

  Cakes are optional, and credit.

  They moved closer toward the sphere

  of the lighthouse, the overcoat slid off,

  revealing—in some way the boy gets in the way

  all the time. Reason and habit

  have beaten a path he’s always circumnavigating,

  but this! No one would ever—

  These accents let us down

  gently onto the torso of a wood

  where birdcatchers yodel and bobwhites cheep.

  It’s not going very far, it’s like going to the door

  after the salesmen have slid into the universal pit.

  And when one goes out it’s time to go too,

  as though Mother and the piano had never exited

  and those china knobs you never put away.

  Feed the horse on brambles the moon

  is coming

  Woman Leaning

  However it may come back to you

  it’ll seem all right. At first.

  Till the ones who do the realizing

  realize, and call you to their office

  at one in the morning.

  I said fix the radiator.

  These gray grapes are spread out before us

  in a feast situation. Yet who can explain

  why we should banquet here?

  Then, in she plops—

  a soloist trained to lead us

  out of the briar patch of history,

  trap that was always here.

  And we, we listen. That’s obvious.

  There was more said in the tent,

  but what I remember only has to do with paddling.

  Then, inexplicably, we’re safe.

  No one loves us for it, yet

  they can dictate to us now

  from a striped sofa that was years in the making.

  And what they tell us to write makes no difference

  but is enough light for us to see by.

  Everyone jumped over the fence safely.

  All that was left was a book under a weeping

  willow, in whose table of contents the glottal insistence

  of the stream was repeated endlessly, like tears

  for our benefit, if we should ever get to know them.

  Yes, Dr. Grenzmer. How May I

  Be of Assistance to You? What!

  You Say the Patient Has Escaped?

  We were staying at the Golden Something-or-Other.

  Anyway, what does it matter now?

  The boats have rolled up their colored sails.

  The city is like a hinge. In the morning its glass

  girders are flushed with light that gets drained

  in the afternoon, but then something funny happens:

  The westward-looking buildings reflect the sun’s

  rays more fiercely than they are projected.

  They become a rival sunset in the east. That’s heresy,

  or at any rate bigamy. Tall buildings

  “to suckle fools and chronicle small beer”; such is my story,

  but I’m glad to be having this chance to tell it to you

  even though we are in a silent movie and can speak only words

  painted with milk. Yet someone comes to care about them:

  There is always someone to care, somewhere,

  but the sheriff vandalizes the day they return.

  I didn’t let you dream about it.

  It is for this I am being punished

  by reforms harder than the ones in Congress.

  They have rules to go by, sins to atone for:

  I, I have only weightlessness

  and a vague feeling that I should be spending my time

  doing other things—sweeping the apartment,

  washing out a child’s mouth with soap.

  It was nugatory. They fed us delicacies

  while we waited for the order of quilts to arrive—

  or was it kilts? Joshua had this haunted feeling

  he’d never finalized it at the start, when all

  should have been beginning, but instead was pleased to slosh around

  in mid-harbor. Anyway, there were invoices. Of that

  he was almost certain. And a number of young girls

  came and stood around the tree in which he was sitting—

  were they the ones who had placed orders for the kilts?

  Or were they mere raisin fanciers? “You’ll see

  when the weather gets dry and yellow the raisins

  will form all by themselves, alone on the branches,

  and no one will care. And those that like to eat them

  real fast out of boxes won’t have a clue

  as to why that old horse-collar is draped over a branch

  of the weeping willow, causing it to weep (that is,

  bestir its leaves) even harder. Some people somewhere are prepared

  for a few things to happen, but that’s not counting us or our

  immediate families. An apple-green boxcar slithers along

  a distant railway, yearning for something

  unnameable at the end of the canyon. Not a

  handful of raisins, probably, but you catch my drift.”

  Soon all was drift. They had a feeling

  they had better go inside, yet none could make a move

  in that direction. All remained transfixed. “Tell them,”
/>
  the skald continued, “but only if they ask,

  how this situation came about. We’ll see then

  what jury will convict me, just because I feel like a woman

  trapped in a man’s body, but only a little—not enough

  to want to wear a skirt, but enough

  to make me feel like putting on a kilt, and even then

  only in Scotland, if I should be so lucky

  as to find myself there some day.” Tremors

  stirred the little band; there was obvious sympathy

  for his plight, mingled with something more acidulous,

  like pickling spices. And all the girls turned away

  to weep, but were changed to ivy

  and stuff like that. Why am I telling you this?

  To assuage my conscience, perhaps, hoping the bad dreams

  will go away, or at least become more liberally mixed

  with the good, for none are totally good

  or bad, just like the people who keep walking into

  them, and the scenery, familiar or obvious though it be.

  Besides, I’ve raised one major issue—

  at least credit me with that. It will be a long time

  before this turns to nothing, and in the meantime

  we can sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories

  of the lives of pets, as the ground freezes and thaws

  many times—it is past caring. And what goes on within us

  will be inscribed by the dancing needle on our chart,

  for others to consult and be derived from.

  I thought it would all end casually on a bank

  of flowers, but alas, a real bank was growing out of it

  with tellers and guards. Who liked the flowers.

  Yesterday, for Instance

  No longer available is the hare

  with milky fur grazing on the clover of memory.

  O beautiful basketballs! How far stretch the docks,

  farther than my bonny sailor is from me.

  The pigeons shift. The sky is syrup and pink gold.

  I can no longer lie. I must tell it “like it is.”

  But where is the raincoat that will hustle me

  to the forest crossing? For it is a convenience

  to know and to learn, and haply no good is in me.

  I must claw the ground for grace. These poor root-systems

  are in faith no better. I must see about clobbering

  the backstairs monster on his toes, let him cover

  my rail of defense with dandelion slips. Then I’ll be off