Ashbery - And the stars were shining: poems

FOR ANNE DUNN As one turns to one in a dream smiling like a bell that has just stopped tolling, holds out a book, and speaks: All the vulgarity of time, from the Stone Age to our present, with its noodle parlors and token resistance, is as a life to the life that is given you. Wear it, so must one descend from checkered heights that are our friends, needlessly rehearsing what we will say as a common light bathes us, a common fiction reverberates as we pass to the celebration. Originally we werent going to leave home. But made bold somehow by the rain we put our best foot forward. Now its years after that. It isnt possible to be young anymore.

Yet the tree treats me like a brute friend; my own shoes have scarred the walk Ive taken.

Our worst fears are realized. Then a string of successes, or failures, follows. She pleads with us to stay: Stay, just for a minute, cant you? We are expelled into the dust of our decisions. Knowing it would be this way hasnt made any of it easier to understand, or bear. May is raving.

Its recapitulations exhaust the soil. Across the marsh some bird misses its mark, walks back, sheepish, cheeping. The isthmus is gilded white. People are returning to the bight: adult swimmers, all of them.

Its an art, knowing who to put with what, and then, while expectations drool, make off with the lodestar, wrapped in a calico handkerchief, in your back pocket. All right, whos got it? Dont look at me, Im waiting for my date, shes already fifteen minutes late.

Listen, wiseguybut the next instant, traffic drowns us like a field of hay. Now its no longer so important about getting home, finishing the job see, the lodestar had a kind of impact for you, but only if you knew about it. Otherwise, not to worry, the clock strikes ten, the evenings off and running. Then, while every thing and body are getting sorted out, thewell, you know, what I call the subjunctive creeps back in, sits up, begs for a vision, or a cookie. Meanwhile wheres the bird? Probably laying eggs or performing some other natural function. Why, am I my brothers keeper, my brother the spy? You and Mrs.

Molesworth know more than youre letting on. I came here from Clapham, searching for a whitewashed cottage in which things were dear to me many a summer. We had our first innocent conversation here, Jack. Just dont lie to me I hate it when people lie to me. They can do anything else to me, really. Why it was let for a song, and that seasons ago.

And the bellybuttons all danced around and the ironing board ambled back to the starting gate and meaningless violence flew helplessly overhead which was too much for the stair Better to get in bed they cry since Zeus the evil one has fixed his beady eye on us and will never come to help us But out of that a red song grew in waves overwhelming field and orchard Do not go back it said for if there is one less of you at the time of counting it will go bad with you and even so, many hairy bodies got up and left Now if there was one thing that could save the situation it was the cow on its little swatch of land I give my milk so that others will not dry up it said and gladly offer my services to the forces of peace and niceness but what really does grow under that tree By now it had all become a question of saving face Many at the party thought so that these were just indifferent conditions that had existed before in the past from time to time so nobody got to find out about the king of hearts said the woman glancing off her shovel The snow continued to descend in rows this rubble that is like life infested with death only do not go there the time should not be anymore I have read many prophetic books and I can tell you now to listen and endure And first the goat arose and circled halfway around the ilex tree and after that several gazed from their windows to observe the chaos harvesting itself laying itself in neat rows before the circled wagons and it was then that many left the painted cities saying we can remember those colors it is enough and we can go back tragically but what would be the point and the laconic ones disappeared first and the others backtracked and soon all was well enough Today I would leave it just as it is. Why it was let for a song, and that seasons ago. And the bellybuttons all danced around and the ironing board ambled back to the starting gate and meaningless violence flew helplessly overhead which was too much for the stair Better to get in bed they cry since Zeus the evil one has fixed his beady eye on us and will never come to help us But out of that a red song grew in waves overwhelming field and orchard Do not go back it said for if there is one less of you at the time of counting it will go bad with you and even so, many hairy bodies got up and left Now if there was one thing that could save the situation it was the cow on its little swatch of land I give my milk so that others will not dry up it said and gladly offer my services to the forces of peace and niceness but what really does grow under that tree By now it had all become a question of saving face Many at the party thought so that these were just indifferent conditions that had existed before in the past from time to time so nobody got to find out about the king of hearts said the woman glancing off her shovel The snow continued to descend in rows this rubble that is like life infested with death only do not go there the time should not be anymore I have read many prophetic books and I can tell you now to listen and endure And first the goat arose and circled halfway around the ilex tree and after that several gazed from their windows to observe the chaos harvesting itself laying itself in neat rows before the circled wagons and it was then that many left the painted cities saying we can remember those colors it is enough and we can go back tragically but what would be the point and the laconic ones disappeared first and the others backtracked and soon all was well enough Today I would leave it just as it is.

The pocket combdirty as a comb, the French say, yet not so dirty, surely not in the spiritual sense some intuit; the razor, lying at an angle to the erect toothbrush, like an alligator stalking a bayadre; the singular effect of all things being themselves, that is, stark mad with no apologies to the world or the ether, and then the crumbling realization that a halt has been called. That the stair treads conspired in it. That the boiling oil hunched above the rim of its vessel, and just sat there. That there were no apologies to be made, ever again, no alibis for the articles returned to the store, just a standoff, placid, eternal. And one can admire again the coatings of things, without prejudice or innuendo, and the kernels be discreetly disposed ofwell, spat out. Such objects as my endurance picks out like a searchlight have gone the extra mile too, like schoolchildren, and are seated now in attentive rows, waiting trimly for these words to flood distraught corners of silences.

We collected them after all for their unique indifference to each other and to the circus that houses us all, and for their collectibility that, and their tendency to fall apart.

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