Ashbery - April galleons : poems

Ages passed slowly, like a load of hay, As the flowers recited their lines And pike stirred at the bottom of the pond. The pen was cool to the touch. The staircase swept upward Through fragmented garlands, keeping the melancholy Already distilled in letters of the alphabet. It would be time for winter now, its spun-sugar Palaces and also lines of care At the mouth, pink smudges on the forehead and cheeks, The color once known as ashes of roses. How many snakes and lizards shed their skins For time to be passing on like this, Sinking deeper in the sand as it wound toward The conclusion. It had all been working so well and now, Well, it just kind of came apart in the hand As a change is voiced, sharp As a fishhook in the throat, and decorative tears flowed Past us into a basin called infinity.

There was no charge for anything, the gates Had been left open intentionally. Dont follow, you can have whatever it is. And in some room someone examines his youth, Finds it dry and hollow, porous to the touch. O keep me with you, unless the outdoors Embraces both of us, unites us, unless The birdcatchers put away their twigs, The fishermen haul in their sleek empty nets And others become part of the immense crowd Around this bonfire, a situation That has come to mean us to us, and the crying In the leaves is saved, the last silver drops.

Rainy days are best, There is some permanence in the angle That things make with the ground; In not taking off after apologies. The speedometers at sundown.

Even as they spoke the sun was beginning to disappear behind a cloud. All right so its better to have vague outlines But wrapped, tightly, around ones mood Of something like vengeful joy. And in the wood Its all the same too. I think I liked you better when I seldom knew you. But lovers are like hermits or cats: they Dont know when to come in, to stop Breaking off twigs for dinner. In the little station I waited for you And shall, what with all the interest I bear toward plans of yours and the future Of stars it makes me thirsty Just to go down on my knees looking In the sawdust for joy.

June and the nippers will scarcely look our way. And be bold then its then This cloud imagines us and all that our story Was ever going to be, and we catch up To ourselves, but they are the selves of others. And with it all the city starts to live As a place where one can believe in moving To a particular name and be there, and then Its more action falling back refreshed into death. We can survive the storms, wearing us Like rainbow hats, afraid to retrace steps To the past that was only recently ours, Afraid of finding a party there. O in all your life were you ever teased Like this, and it became your mind? Where still some saunter on the bank in mixed Plum shade and weary sun, resigned To the installations on the opposite bank, we mix Breathless greetings and tears and lately taste The precious supplies.

And the storm reestablished itself As a hole in the sheet of time And of the weariness of the world, And all the old work that remains to be done on its surface.

Came morning and the husband was back on the shore To ask another favor of the fish, Leviathan now, patience wearing thin. Whose answer Bubbled out of the waves crenellations: Too late! Yet if you analyze The abstract good fortune that has brought you To this floor, you must also unpluck the bees Immured in the hive of your mind and bring the nuisance And the glory into sharper focus. Why, Others too will have implored before forgetting To remove a stick of night from the scrub-forest That keeps us wondering about ourselves Until luck or nepotism has run its course! Only I say, Your uniqueness isnt that unique And doors must close in the shaved head Before they can spring ajar. Take this. Its promise equals power. To be shaken thus Vehemently back into ones trance doesnt promise Any petitioner much, even the servile ones.

But night in its singleness Of motive rewards all equally for what cannot Appear disinterested survival tactics from the vantage Point of some rival planet. Things go on being the same, As darkness and ships ruffle the sky.

In the beginning there are those who dont quite fit in But are somehow okay. And then some morning There are places that suddenly seem wonderful: Weather and water seem wonderful, And the peaceful night sky that arrives In time to protect us, like a sword Cutting the blue cloak of a prince. But one night the door opened And there was nothing to say, the relationships Had gotten strangely tilted, like price tags. That girl you loved, that former patient of mine, Arrives soused on a Monday After the crunch it seems.

Please play this back. All the recording In the world wont help unless you or someone else listens At some point in time to what the mountain Is helplessly trying to tell us, season After season, whose streams roar fatally In and out of one chapter in our lives. The book was a present. Best to throw it away, to the bottom Of the sea where ingenuous fish may read it Or not. A little striving here, Some relaxation there, and no one will know the difference. Oh, but what you said about the season Is it dull, or exhausting, or has it left And will be right back with something truly splendid For us, for once in a lifetime?

Why does he do it like that say it like that you might ask Dream it like that over landscapes spotted with cream and vehement Holes in the ground that have become little lakes, now that the chill and ardor Of winter are passing into the real thing, where we shall be obliged To survive? That there is a precise, preordained structure That has been turned inside out to meet new personal needs And attract newer bonuses isnt the reply, its the solution, Read, the asking, so while this helps, doesnt hinder, its persona Is off running parallel somewhere: monitorable, but thats about it.

And we see the cries of the innocent how they were coming to help Us in the storehouse and recruit all that bad knowledge so as to save it For brighter purposes some day. Alas, these good gestures cant help; What is needed is a disparate account of the thing happening just now, To have it sink finally into print, from which there is no escape, no Never, it all just gets gradually lost for the betterment of humankind. Think how if there were no toys, we might grow up repeating these encounters With actual people, and how, much later, seriousness would get destroyed And incorporated into the record, like sand into concrete. And the long taffylike ribbon that oozes so perfectly Telling us much about ourselves and those outside us and like us Would reach its resting place in the desert sump sooner for that: The Lake Havasu City of our dreams where London Bridge eyes the sands Nervously, and vice versa. No, theres no shortcut to being overcharged, And if one wants to become a diamond eventually it isnt too early To begin thinking about it, no, to begin thinking about it right now Before storks are actually to be observed standing on chimneys, cruelly one-legged, And the tarmac of one season is brought in, brushed off and saved For any other season: for all consequences to be minded. My name is Steve she said my name is Brian My pretty baa-lambs each have names just like everything else upon earth, Proper names, I mean.

This way we are allowed to recognize species From itinerant examples of them: Hi, my names Joe, And one is instantly plugged in to the mountains of possibility That can only refresh us if we know about how to go about letting them: In quiet, in dove-gray silence Where the rescuers tools are far, far richer than they were before. Even ghost stories are fairly prevalent, and about to be believed. Why not, after all, with so much variation, Such mutability in the recounting of it? Yet soon, of course, All are bound into a uniform edition, one cant be redeemed By any of it anymore, only darkness and truth can do that now: The woods where we used to wander, fumbling for carob, The

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