A Wave (11 page)

Still, coming home through all this

And realizing its vastness does add something to its dimension:

Teachers would never have stood for this. Which is why

Being tall and shy, you can still stand up more clearly

To the definition of what you are. You are not a sadist

But must only trust in the dismantling of that definition

Some day when names are being removed from things, when all attributes

Are sinking in the maelstrom of de-definition like spars.

You must then come up with something to say,

Anything, as long as it’s no more than five minutes long,

And in the interval you shall have been washed. It’s that easy.

But meanwhile, I know, stone tenements are still hoarding

The shadow that is mine; there is nothing to admit to,

No one to confess to. This period goes on for quite a few years

But as though along a low fence by a sidewalk. Then brandishes

New definitions in its fists, but these are evidently false

And get thrown out of court. Next you’re on your own

In an old film about two guys walking across the United States.

The love that comes after will be richly satisfying,

Like rain on the desert, calling unimaginable diplomacy into being

Until you thought you should get off here, maybe this stop

Was yours. And then it all happens blindingly, over and over

In a continuous, vivid present that wasn’t there before.

No need to make up stories at this juncture, everybody

Likes a joke and they find yours funny. And then it’s just

Two giant steps down to the big needing and feeling

That is yours to grow in. Not grow old, the

Magic present still insists on being itself,

But to play in. To live and be lived by

And in this way bring all things to the sensible conclusion

Dreamed into their beginnings, and so arrive at the end.

Simultaneously in an area the size of West Virginia

The opposing view is climbing toward heaven: how swiftly

It rises! How slender the packed silver mass spiraling

Into further thinness, into what can only be called excess,

It seems, now. And anyway it sounds better in translation

Which is the only language you will read it in:

“I was lost, but seemed to be coming home,

Through quincunxes of apple trees, but ever

As I drew closer, as in Zeno’s paradox, the mirage

Of home withdrew and regrouped a little farther off.

I could see white curtains fluttering at the windows

And in the garden under a big brass-tinted apple tree

The old man had removed his hat and was gazing at the grass

As though in sorrow, sorrow for what I had done.

Realizing it was now or never, I lurched

With one supreme last effort out of the dream

Onto the couch-grass behind the little red-painted palings:

I was here! But it all seemed so lonesome. I was welcomed

Without enthusiasm. My room had been kept as it was

But the windows were closed, there was a smell of a closed room.

And though I have been free ever since

To browse at will through my appetites, lingering

Over one that seemed special, the lamplight

Can never replace the sad light of early morning

Of the day I left, convinced (as indeed I am today)

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

You can point to the accessible result. Not like a great victory

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

Might as well offer it to your neighbor, the first one you meet, or throw

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 who 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.

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.”