A few snowflakes are floating in the airshaft. Across the way
The sun was sinking, casting gray
Shadows on the front of the buildings.
Lower your left shoulder.
Stand still and do not seesaw with your body.
Any more golfing hints, Charlie?
Plant your feet squarely. Grasp your club lightly but firmly in the hollow of your fingers.
Slowly swing well back and complete your stroke well through, pushing to the very end.
“All up and down de whole creation,” like magic-lantern slides projected on the wall of a cavern: castles, enchanted gardens, etc.
The usual anagrams of moonlight—a story
That subsides quietly into plain historical fact.
You have chosen the customary images of youth, old age and death
To keep harping on this traditional imagery. The reader
Will not have been taken in.
He will have managed to find out all about it, the way people do.
The moonlight congress backs out then. And with a cry
He throws the whole business into the flames: books, notes, pencil diagrams, everything.
No, the only thing that interests him is day
And its problems. Freiheit! Freiheit! To be out of these dusty cells once and for all
Has been the dream of mankind since the beginning of the universe.
His day is breaking over the eastern mountains, at least that’s the way he tells it.
Only the crater of becoming—a sealed consciousness—resists the profaning mass of the sun.
You who automatically sneer at everything that comes along, except your own work, of course,
Now feel the curious force of the invasion; its soldiers, all and some,
A part of you the minute they appear. It is as though workmen in blue overalls
Were constantly bringing on new props and taking others away: that is how you feel the drama going past you, powerless to act in it.
To have it all be over! To wake suddenly on a hillside
With a valley far below—the clouds—
That is the penance you have already done:
January, March, February. You are living toward a definition
Of the peaceful appetite, then you see
Them standing around limp and hungry like adjacent clouds.
Soon there is to be exchange of ideas and
Far more beautiful handshake, under the coat of
Weather is undecided right now.
Postpone the explanation.
The election is to be held tomorrow, under the trees.
You felt the months keep coming up
And it is December again,
The snow outside. Or is it June full of sun
And the prudent benefits of sun, but still the postman comes.
The true meaning of some of his letters is slight—
Another time I thought I could see myself.
This too proved illusion, but I could deal with the way
I keep returning on myself like a plank
Like a small boat blown away from the wind.
It all ends in a smile somewhere,
Notes to be taken on all this,
And you can see in the dark, of which the night
Is the continuation of your ecstasy and apprehension.
IV
The wind thrashes the maple seed-pods,
The whole brilliant mass comes spattering down.
This is my fourteenth year as governor of C province.
I was little more than a lad when I first came here.
Now I am old but scarcely any wiser.
So little are white hair and a wrinkled forehead a sign of wisdom!
To slowly raise oneself
Hand over hand, lifting one’s entire weight;
To forget there was a possibility
Of some more politic movement. That freedom, courage
And pleasant company could exist.
That has always been behind you.
An earlier litigation: wind hard in the tops
Of the baggy eucalyptus branches.
Today I wrote, “The spring is late this year.
In the early mornings there is hoarfrost on the water meadows.
And on the highway the frozen ruts are papered over with ice.”
The day was gloves.
How far from the usual statement
About time, ice—the weather itself had gone.
I mean this. Through the years
You have approached an inventory
And it is now that tomorrow
Is going to be the climax of your casual
Statement about yourself, begun
So long ago in humility and false quietude.
The sands are frantic
In the hourglass. But there is time
To change, to utterly destroy
That too-familiar image
Lurking in the glass
Each morning, at the edge of the mirror.
The train is still sitting in the station.
You only dreamed it was in motion.
There are a few travelers on Z high road.
Behind a shutter, two black eyes are watching them.
They belong to the wife of P, the high-school principal.
The screen door bangs in the wind, one of the hinges is loose.
And together we look back at the house.
It could use a coat of paint
I have all I can do to keep body and soul together
And soon, even that relatively simple task may prove to be beyond my powers.
That was a good joke you played on the other guests.
A joke of silence.
One seizes these moments as they come along, afraid
To believe too much in the happiness that might result
Or confide too much of one’s love and fear, even in
Oneself.
The spring, though mild, is incredibly wet.
I have spent the afternoon blowing soap bubbles
And it is with a feeling of delight I realize I am
All alone in the skittish darkness.
The birch-pods come clattering down on the weed-grown marble pavement.
And a curl of smoke stands above the triangular wooden roof.
Seventeen years in the capital of Foo-Yung province!
Surely woman was born for something
Besides continual fornication, retarded only by menstrual cramps.
I had thought of announcing my engagement to you
On the day of the first full moon of X month.
The wind has stopped, but the magnolia blossoms still
Fall with a plop onto the dry, spongy earth.
The evening air is pestiferous with midges.
There is only one way of completing the puzzle:
By finding a hog-shaped piece that is light green shading to buff at one side.
It is the beginning of March, a few
Russet and yellow wallflowers are blooming in the border
Protected by moss-grown, fragmentary masonry.
One morning you appear at breakfast
Dressed, as for a journey, in your worst suit of clothes.
And over a pot of coffee, or, more accurately, rusted water
Announce your intention of leaving me alone in this cistern-like house.
In your own best interests I shall decide not to believe you.
I think there is a funny sand bar
Beyond the old boardwalk
Your intrigue makes you understand.
“At thirty-two I came up to take my examination at the university.
The U wax factory, it seemed, wanted a new general manager.
I was the sole applicant for the job, but it was refused me.
So I have preferred to finish my life
In the quietude of this floral retreat.�
��
The tiresome old man is telling us his life story.
Trout are circling under water—
Masters of eloquence
Glisten on the pages of your book
The “second position”
Comes in the seventeenth year
Watching the meaningless gyrations of flies above a sill.
Heads in hands, waterfall of simplicity.
The delta of living into everything.
The pump is busted. I shall have to get it fixed.
Your knotted hair
Around your shoulders
A shawl the color of the spectrum
Like that marvelous thing you haven’t learned yet.
To refuse the square hive,
postpone the highest …
The apples are all getting tinted
In the cool light of autumn.
The constellations are rising
In perfect order: Taurus, Leo, Gemini.
About the Author
John Ashbery was born in 1927 in Rochester, New York, and grew up on a farm near Lake Ontario. He studied English at Harvard and at Columbia, and along with his friends Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch, he became a leading voice in what came to be called the New York School of poets. Ashbery’s poetry collection Some Trees was selected by W. H. Auden as the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize in 1955—the first of over twenty-five critically admired works Ashbery has published in a career spanning more than six decades. His book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award, and since then Ashbery has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Humanities Medal, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and a Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors.
For years, Ashbery taught creative writing at Brooklyn College and Bard College in New York, working with students and codirecting MFA programs while continuing to write and publish award-winning collections of poetry—all marked by his signature philosophical wit, ardent honesty, and polyphonic explorations of modern language. His most recent book of poems is Quick Question, published in 2012. He lives in New York.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1997 by John Ashbery
Cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4804-5919-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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