John Ashbery

Capital O

Sweet food, I lap you up
as from a vessel of kindness.
We "unpack" paradigms of
unstructured mess. Leave us alone this day.

I'd like to write you about all this.
Similarly, I'd like not to have to write
about all the things we are
and never could be: the hereafter of things.

Or so it seemed, walking the plank
of every good thing
toward the tank of carnivorous eels
singing, chiming as we go

into subtracted Totentanz.
That is to say, behind
every good son
there is a watchful father.

Needless to tell, snow coughed up scenery.
There was a stop on the scenic railway
called Edelweiss, and as we got nearer
my heart began to sing lighter,

I was approached by foreign agents
masquerading as talent scouts
and lo, everything dissolved became grand;
there were blind lanterns in the sedge

and the shimmy was named dance of the year.
Soon, the deadline had been passed,
meaning new lime-green shoots in the distance
and banqueting on the firing range

where all reaction is overdue
and the stars shudder and turn silver,
then pink in the difficult light.
Then it's tomorrow and breakfast,

with unanswered letters galore, and this page,
this furtive one, tucked out of an envelope
please, let there be more commotion,
less avian flu. I mean, even cats
are aware, even as they prowl, which is much the same

while you and I pierced the lotus
and the old stereopticon came apart
in my hands, reward for sub rosa being.

New Concerns

Sulfurous, Mrs. Hanratty's apron floats
above the sunset, auguring extreme cold.
The guests' advantage doesn't undermine
their green goalie days.

Wind-driven pea-shoots strew the skies.
All is tremor, modesty, a waiting to be told.
Several speakers impugn at once
the veracity of a late brook in August,
and all it would have meant on the same day
in another year. By now, runners will have reached
the northern border, plunged fingertips
in the flame. And, yes,

this is one of those times.

Novelty Love Trot

I enjoy biographies and bibliographies,
and cultural studies. As for music, my tastes
run to Liszt's Consolations, especially the flatter ones,
though I've never been consoled
by them. Well, once maybe.

As for religion, it's about going to hell,
isn't it? I read that 30% of Americans believe in hell,
though only one percent thinks they'll end up there,
which says a lot about us, and about the other religions.
Nobody believes in heaven. Hell is what gets them fired up.
I'm probably the only American

who thinks he's going to heaven, though my reasons
would be hard to explain. I enjoy seasons
and picnicking. A waft from a tree branch
and I'm in heaven, though not literally.
For that one must await the steep decline
into a declivity, and shouts from companions
who are not far off.

In the end it matters little what things we enjoy.
We list them, and barely have we begun
when the listener's attention has turned to something else.
"Did you see that? The way that guy cut him off?"
Darlings, we'll all be known for some detail,
some nick in the chiseled brow, but it won't weigh much
in the scale's careening pan. What others think
of us is the only thing that matters,
to us and to them. You are stuffing squash blossoms
with porcini mushrooms. I am somewhere else, alone as usual.

I must get back to my elegy.

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John Ashbery's most recent book is Selected Prose (University of Michigan Press, 2004). His next volume of poems, Where Shall I Wander, is forthcoming in 2005. He is Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. contents | next