John Ashbery - Shadow Train: Poems

The helmeted head is tilted up at you again Through a question. Booze and pills? Probably it has no cachet or real status Beyond the spokes of the web of good intentions That radiate a certain distance out from the crater, that is the smile, That began it? Do you see yourself Covered by this uniform of half regrets and Inadmissible satisfactions, dazzling as the shower Sucked back up into the peacocks-feather eye in the sky As though through a straw, to connect up with your brain, The thing given you tonight to wrestle with like an angel Until dawn? The snuffer says it better. The cone Squelches the wick, the insulted smoke jerks ceilingward In the long time since we have been afraid, while the host Is looking for ice cubes and a glass, is gone Into the similarity of firmaments. One last question. A few more might have survived the fall To read the afternoon away, navigating In sullen peace, a finger at the lips, From the beginning of one surf point to the end, And again, and may have wondered why being alone Is the condition of happiness, the substance Of the golden hints, articulation in the hall outside, And the condition as well of using that knowledge To pleasure, always in confinement? Otherwise it fades Like the rejoicing at the beginning of an opera, since we know The seriousness of what lies ahead: that we can split open The ripe exchanges, kisses, sighs, only in unholy Solitude, and sample them here. It means that a disguised fate Is weaving a net of heat lightning on the horizon, and that this Will be neither bad nor good when experienced.

Meanwhile The night has been pushed back again, but cannot say where it has been.

Clearly the song will have to wait Until the time when everything is serious. Martyrs of fixed eye, with a special sigh, Set down their goads. The skies have endured Too long to be blasted into perdition this way, And they fall, awash with blood and flowers. In the dream next door they are still changing, And the wakening changes too, into life. Is this life? Yes, the last minute was too And the joy of informing takes over Like the crackle of artillery fire in the outer suburbs And I was going to wish that you too were the I In the novel told in the first person that This breathy waiting is, that we could crash through The sobbing underbrush to the laughter that is under the ground, Since anyone can wait.

We have only to begin on time.

Now that youve done it, say OK, thats it for a while. His fault wasnt great; it was over-eagerness; it didnt deserve The death penalty, but its different when it happens In your neighborhood, on your doorstep; the dropping light spoilt nicely his Name tags and leggings; all those things that belonged to him, As it were, were thrown out overnight, onto the street. So much for fashion. The moon decrees That it be with us awhile to enhance the atmosphere But in the long run serious concerns prevail, such as What time is it and what are you going to do about that? Gaily inventing brand names, place-names, you were surrounded By such abundance, yet it seems only fair to start taking in The washing now. It was me here. Though. Though.

And whether this Be rebus or me now, the way the grass is planted Red stretching far out to the horizon Surely prevails now. I shall return in the dark and be seen, Be led to my own room by well-intentioned hands, Placed in a box with a lid whose underside is dark So as to grow, and shall grow Taller than plumes out on the ocean, Grazing historically. And shall see The end of much learning, and other things Out of control and it ends too soon, before hanging up. So, laying his cheek against the dressers wooden one, He died making up stories, the ones Not every child wanted to listen to. And for a while it seemed that the road back Was a track bombarded by stubble like a snow.

If it was treason it was so well handled that it Became unimaginable.

No, it was ambrosia In the alley under the stars and not this undiagnosable Turning, a shadow in the plant of all things That makes us aware of certain moments, That the end is not far off since it will occur In the present and this is the present. No it was something not very subtle then and yet again Youve got to remember we dont see that much. We see a portion of eaves dripping in the pastel book And are aware that everything doesnt count equally There is dreaminess and infection in the sum And since this too is of our everydays It matters only to the one you are next to This time, giving you a ride to the station. It foretells itself, not the hiccup you both notice.

Then take the quicklime to the little tree. And ask.

So all will remain in place, percolating. You see the sandlots still foaming with the blood of light Though the source has been withdrawn. What stunted fig or quince pierced those Now empty pairs of parentheses. You shout With the holy feeling of an oppressor, a scourge, In order for the details to stick, Like little blades of grass, stubborn and sick. It is still too many ideas for a landscape. In another time the tide would have turned, automobiles and the factory Gushing in to frame the shining, clever, puzzled faces.

There would be even less to pick over, to glean. But take this idea with you, please. Its all there, Wrapped up. In the time it takes for nothing to happen The places, the chairs and tables, the branches, were yours then.

Warren G. Harding invented the word normalcy, And the lesser-known bloviate, meaning, one imagines, To spout, to spew aimless verbiage.

He never wanted to be president. The Ohio Gang made him. He died in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, coming back from Alaska, As his wife was reading to him, about him, From The Saturday Evening Post. Poor Warren. He wasnt a bad egg, Just weak. He loved women and Ohio. This protected summer of high, white clouds, a new golf star Flashes like confetti across the intoxicating early part Of summer, almost to the end of August.

The crowd is hysterical: Fickle as always, they follow him to the edge Of the inferno. But the fall is, deliciously, only his. They shall communicate this and that and compute Fixed names like doorstep in the wind. The agony is permanent Rather than eternal. Hed have noticed it.

Not spoiling it for later, yet few are So febrile, so flourishing, and I extract Digits from the Carolinas to fill out those days in Maine, Only now trusting myself, as in the latter period I had not yet learned to do. Not spoiling it for later, yet few are So febrile, so flourishing, and I extract Digits from the Carolinas to fill out those days in Maine, Only now trusting myself, as in the latter period I had not yet learned to do.

And on top of all this one must still learn to judge the quality Of those moments when it becomes necessary to break the rule, To relax standards, bring light and chaos Into the order of the house. A slatternly welcome Suits some as well, no doubt, but the point is There are still others whom we know nothing about And who are growing, it seems, at a rate far in excess Of the legislated norm, for whom the psychological consequences Of the forest primeval of our inconsistency, nay, our lives If you prefer, and you can quote me, could be numbing. Thus, one always reins in, after too much thoughtfulness, the joke Prescription. Games were made to seem like that: the raw fruit, bleeding.

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