Ashbery - Rivers and mountains : poems

We had thought, for instance, of sending you to the middle of the desert, To a violent sea, or of having the closeness of the others be air To you, pressing you back into a startled dream As sea-breezes greet a childs face. But the past is already here, and you are nursing some private project. The worst is not over, yet I know You will be happy here. Because of the logic Of your situation, which is something no climate can outsmart. Tender and insouciant by turns, you see You have built a mountain of something, Thoughtfully pouring all your energy into this single monument, Whose wind is desire starching a petal, Whose disappointment broke into a rainbow of tears.

Certainly squirrels lived in the woods But devastation and dull sleep still Hung over the land, quelled The rioters turned out of sleep in the peace of prisons Singing on marble factory walls Deaf consolation of minor tunes that pack The air with heavy invisible rods Pent in some sand valley from Which only quiet walking ever instructs. The bird flew over and Satthere was nothing else to do. Do not mistake its silence for pride or strength Or the waterfall for a harbor Full of light boats that is there Performing for thousands of people In clothes some with places to go Or games. Sometimes over the pillar Of square stones its impact Makes a light print. So going around cities To get to other places you found It all on paper but the land Was made of paper processed To look like ferns, mud or other Whose sea unrolled its magic Distances and then rolled them up Its secret was only a pocket After all but some corners are darker Than these moonless nights spent as on a raft In the seclusion of a melody heard As though through trees And you can never ignite their touch Long but there were homes Flung far out near the asperities Of a sharp, rocky pinnacle And other collective places Shadows of vineyards whose wine Tasted of the forest floor Fisheries and oyster beds Tides under the pole Seminaries of instruction, public Places for electric light And the major tax assessment area Wrinkled on the plan Of election to public office Sixty-two years old bath and breakfast The formal traffic, shadows To make it not worth joining After the ox had pulled away the cart. Your plan was to separate the enemy into two groups With the razor-edged mountains between.

It worked well on paper But their camp had grown To be the mountains and the map Carefully peeled away and not torn Was the light, a tender but tough bark On everything. Fortunately the war was solved In another way by isolating the two sections Of the enemys navy so that the mainland Warded away the big floating ships. Light bounced off the ends Of the small gray waves to tell Them in the observatory About the great drama that was being won To turn off the machinery And quietly move among the rustic landscape Scooping snow off the mountains rinsing The coarser ones that love had Slowly risen in the night to overflow Wetting pillow and petal Determined to place the letter On the unassassinated presidents desk So that a stamp could reproduce all this In detail, down to the last autumn leaf And the affliction of June ride Slowly out into the sun-blackened landscape.

When the flat table used to result A match recedes, slowly, into the night. The academy of the future is Opening its doors and willing The fruitless sunlight streams into domes, The chairs piled high with books and papers. The sedate one is this months skittish one Confirming the property that, A timeless value, has changed hands. And you could have a new automobile Ping pong set and garage, but the thief Stole everything like a miracle. In his book there was a picture of treason only And in the garden, cries and colors.

Such fire! leading away from destruction. Somewhere in outer ether I glimpsed you Coming at me, the solo barrier did it this time, Guessing us staying, true to be at the blue mark Of the threshold. Tired of planning it again and again, The cool boy distant, and the soaked-up Afterthought, like so much rain, or roof. The miracle took you in beside him. Leaves rushed the window, there was clear water and the sound of a lock. Now I never see you much any more.

The summers are much colder than they used to be In that other time, when you and I were young. I miss the human truth of your smile, The halfhearted gaze of your palms, And all things together, but there is no comic reign Only the facts you put to me. You must not, then, Be very surprised if I am alone: it is all for you, The night, and the stars, and the way we used to be. There is no longer any use in harping on The incredible principle of daylong silence, the dark sunlight As only the grass is beginning to know it, The wreath of the north pole, Festoons for the late return, the shy pensioners Agasp on the lamplit air. What is agreeable Is to hold your hand. The gravel Underfoot.

The time is for coming close. Useless Verbs shooting the other words far away. I had already swallowed the poison And could only gaze into the distance at my life Like a saints with each day distinct. No heaviness in the upland pastures. Nothing In the forest.

And the clothes they wear In the gray unweeded sky of our earth There is no possibility of change Because all of the true fragments are here. So I was glad of the fogs Taking me to you Undetermined summer thing eaten Of grief and passagewhere you stay. The wheel is ready to turn again. When you have gone it will light up, The shadow of the spokes to drown Your departure where the summer knells Speak to grown dawn. There is after all a kind of promise To the affair of the waiting weather. We have learned not to be tired Among the lanterns of this year of sleep But someone paysno transparency Has ever hardened us before To long piers of silence, and hedges Of understanding, difficult passing From one lesson to the next and the coldness Of the consistency of our lives Devotion to immaculate danger.