COMING UP!
Vetiver
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 chance 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.
Don’t follow, you can have whatever it is.
And in some room someone examines his youth,
Find 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.
— from April Galleons (© 1987, 2007, 2008 Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)
The Love Interest
We could see it coming from forever,
then it was simply here, parallel
to the day’s walking. By then it was we
who had disappeared, into the tunnel of a book.
Rising late at night, we join the current
of tomorrow’s news. Why not? Unlike
some others, we haven’t anything to ask for
or borrow. We’re just pieces of solid geometry:
cylinders or rhomboids. A certain satisfaction
has been granted us. Sure, we keep coming back
for more—that’s part of the “human” aspect
of the parade. And there are darker regions
penciled in, that we should explore some time.
For now it’s enough that this day is over.
It brought its load of freshness, dropped it off
and left. As for us, we’re still here, aren’t we?
— from Where Shall I Wander: New Poems (© 2003, 2005, 2007 Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)