Of the logic of my search, yet all unprepared
To look into the practical aspects, the whys and wherefores,
And so never know, eventually, whether I have accomplished
My end, or merely returned, another leaf that falls.”
One must be firm not to be taken in by the histrionics
And even more by the rigorous logic with which the enemy
Deploys his message like iron trenches under ground
That rise here and there in blunt, undulating shapes.
And once you have told someone that none of it frightens you
There is still the breached sense of your own being
To live with, to somehow nurse back to plenitude:
Yet it never again has that hidden abundance,
That relaxed, joyous well-being with which
In other times it frolicked along roads, making
The best of ignorance and unconscious, innocent selfishness,
The spirit that was to occupy those times
Now transposed, sunk too deep in its own reflection
For memory. The eager calm of every day.
But in the end the dark stuff, the odd quick attack
Followed by periods of silence that get shorter and shorter
Resolves the subjective-versus-objective approach by undoing
The complications of our planet, its climate, its sonatinas
And stories, its patches of hard ugly snow waiting around
For spring to melt them. And it keeps some memories of the troubled
Beginning-to-be-resolved period even in the timely first inkling
Of maturity in March, “when night and day grow equal,” but even
More in the solemn peach-harvest that happens some months later
After differing periods of goofing-off and explosive laughter.
To be always articulating these preludes, there seems to be no
Sense in it, if it is going to be perpetually five o’clock
With the colors of the bricks seeping more and more blood-like through the tan
Of trees, and then only to blacken. But it says more
About us. When they finally come
With much laborious jangling of keys to unlock your cell
You can tell them yourself what it is,
Who you are, and how you happened to turn out this way,
And how they made you, for better or for worse, what you are now,
And how you seem to be, neither humble nor proud, frei aber einsam.
And should anyone question the viability of this process
That tirelessly sweeps over mankind again and again at the end
Of each era, presuming you can locate it, for the greater good
Of history, though you are not the first person to confuse
Its solicitation with something like scorn, but the slow polishing
Of an infinitely tiny cage big enough to hold all the dispiritedness,
Contempt, and incorrect conclusions based on false premises that now
Slow you down but by that time, enchaliced, will sound attentive,
Tonic even, an antidote to badly reasoned desiring: footfalls
Of the police approaching gingerly through the soft spring air.
At Pine Creek imitation the sky was no nearer. The difference
Was microtones, a seasoning between living and gestures.
It emerged as a rather stiff impression
Of all things. Not that there aren’t those glad to have
A useful record like this to add to the collection
In the portfolio. But beyond just needing where is the need
To carry heaven around in one’s breast-pocket? To satisfy
The hunger of millions with something more substantial than good wishes
And still withhold the final reassurance? So you see these
Days each with its disarming set of images and attitudes
Are beneficial perhaps but only after the last one
In every series has disappeared, down the road, forever, at night.
It would be cockier to ask of heaven just what is this present
Of an old dishpan you bestowed on me? Can I get out the door
With it, now that so many old enmities and flirtations have shrunk
To little more than fine print in the contexts of lives and so much
New ground is coming undone, shaken out like a scarf or a handkerchief
From this window that dominates everything perhaps a little too much?
In falling we should note the protective rush of air past us
And then pray for some day after the war to cull each of
The limited set of reflections we were given at the beginning
To try to make a fortune out of. Only then will some kind of radical stance
Have had some meaning, and for itself, not for us who lie gasping
On slopes never having had the nerve to trust just us, to go out with us
Not fearing some solemn overseer in the breath from the treetops.
And that that game-plan and the love we have been given for nothing
In particular should coincide—no, it is not yet time to think these things.
In vain would one try to peel off that love from the object it fits
So nicely, now, remembering it will have to be some day. You
It away entirely, as plan to unlock on such and such a date
The door to this forest that has been your total upbringing.
No one expects it, and thus
Flares are launched out over the late disturbed landscape
Of items written down only to be forgotten once more, forever this time.
And already the sky is getting to be less salmon-colored,
The black clouds more meaningless (otter-shaped at first;
Now, as they retreat into incertitude, mere fins)
And perhaps it’s too late for anything like the overhaul
That seemed called for, earlier, but whose initiative
Was it after all? I mean I don’t mind staying here
A little longer, sitting quietly under a tree, if all this
Is going to clear up by itself anyway.
There is no indication this will happen,
But I don’t mind. I feel at peace with the parts of myself
That questioned this other, easygoing side, chafed it
To a knotted rope of guesswork looming out of storms
And darkness and proceeding on its way into nowhere
Barely muttering. Always, a few errands
Summon us periodically from the room of our forethought
And that is a good thing. And such attentiveness
Besides! Almost more than anybody could bring to anything,
But we managed it, and with a good grace, too. Nobody
Is going to hold that against us. But since you bring up the question
I will say I am not unhappy to place myself entirely
At your disposal temporarily. Much that had drained out of living
Returns, in those moments, mounting the little capillaries
Of polite questions and seeming concern. I want it back.
And though that other question that I asked and can’t
Remember any more is going to move still farther upward, casting
Its shadow enormously over where I remain, I can’t see it.
Enough to know that I shall have answered for myself soon,
Be led away for further questioning and later returned
To the amazingly quiet room in which all my life has been spent.
It comes and goes; the walls, like veils, are never the same,
Yet the thirst remains identical, always to be entertained
And marveled at. And it is finally we wh
o break it off,
Speed the departing guest, lest any question remain
Unasked, and thereby unanswered. Please, it almost
Seems to say, take me with you, I’m old enough. Exactly.
And so each of us has to remain alone, conscious of each other
Until the day when war absolves us of our differences. We’ll
Stay in touch. So they have it, all the time. But all was strange.
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.
Grateful acknowlegment is made to the following publications, in which some of the poems in this book appeared originally: American Poetry Review: “A Wave”; Conjuctions: “When the Sun Went Down,” “A Fly,” “I See, Said the Blind Man, as He Put Down His Hammer and Saw,” “Destiny Waltz,” “Problems,” and “They Like”; Grand Street: “But What Is the Reader to Make of This?,” “Purists Will Object,” and “Darlene’s Hospital”; Mothers of Mud: “Edition Peters, Leipzig”; New York Arts Journal: “Cups with Broken Handles” and “The Path to the White Moon”; The New York Review of Books: “Landscape (After Baudelaire)” and “More Pleasant Adventures”; The New Yorker: “At North Farm,” “Down by the Station, Early in the Morning,” “Proust’s Questionnaire,” “The Ongoing Story,” and “Never Seek to Tell Thy Love”; The Paris Review: “Rain Moving In”; Rolling Stone: “Staffage”; Sulphur: “37 Haiku,” “Haibun (1-6),” and “So Many Lives”; The Times Literary Supplement: “Just Walking Around,” “The Songs We Know Best,” “Thank You for Not Cooperating,” and “Trefoil”; Vanity Fair: “Around the Rough and Rugged Rocks the Ragged Rascal Rudely Ran”; Virginia Quarterly Review: “The Lonedale Operator.”
“Variation on a Noel,” “The Songs We Know Best,” “The Lonedale Operator,” and “Whatever It Is, Wherever You Are” appear in Apparitions, a limited-edition anthology published by Sun & Moon Press.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint copyrighted material:
EMI Music Company: Portions of lyrics from the song “Sentimental Journey,” by Les Brown and Benjamin Homer. Used by permission of Morley Music, c/o Colgems EMI Music, Inc., Hollywood, California. All rights reserved.
Oxford University Press, England: A selection from “When We Dead Awaken,” by Henrik Ibsen, from The Oxford Ibsen, Vol. VIII.
Copyright © 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984 by John Ashbery
Cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4804-5908-3
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