John Ashbery

                                                    portrait by Fairfield Porter (1972) 

These Lacustrine Cities

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing

Into something forgetful, although angry with history.

They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,   

Though this is only one example.

They emerged until a tower

Controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back

Into the past for swans and tapering branches,

Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless love.

Then you are left with an idea of yourself

And the feeling of ascending emptiness of the afternoon   

Which must be charged to the embarrassment of others   

Who fly by you like beacons.

The night is a sentinel.

Much of your time has been occupied by creative games

Until now, but we have all-inclusive plans for you.

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 child’s 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.

John Ashbery

  

    portrait by Richard Avedon (1984)

SLEEPERS AWAKE

Cervantes was asleep when he wrote Don Quixote. Joyce slept during the Wandering Rocks section of Ulysses. Homer nodded and occasionally slept during the greater part of the Iliad; he was awake however when he wrote the Odyssey. Proust snored his way through The Captive, as have legions of his readers after him. Melville was asleep at the wheel for much of Moby-Dick. Fitzgerald slept through Tender Is the Night, which is perhaps not so surprising, No one knows too much about George Eliot’s writing habits—my guess is she would sleep a few minutes, wake up and write something, then pop back to sleep again. Lew Wallace’s forty winks came, incredibly, during the chariot race in Ben-Hur. Emily Dickinson slept on her cold, narrow bed in Amherst. When she awoke there would be a new poem inscribed by Jack Frost on the windowpane; outside, glass foliage chimed. Good old Walt snored as he wrote and, like so many of us, insisted he didn’t. Maugham snored on the Riviera. Agatha Christie slept daintily, as a woman sleeps, which is why her novels are like tea sandwiches—artistic, for the most part. I sleep when I cannot avoid it; my writing and sleeping are constantly improving.

I Sleep When I Cannot Avoid It

John Ashbery

Farm Implements And Rutabagas In A Landscape

The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits 
in thunder, 
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment, 
From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country." 
Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: "How 
pleasant 
To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she 
scratched 
Her cleft chin's solitary hair. She remembered spinach 

And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach. 
"M'love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out 
in thunder 
Today, and it shall be as you wish." He scratched 
The part of his head under his hat. The apartment 
Seemed to grow smaller. "But what if no pleasant 
Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my 
country." 

Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country. 
Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach 
When the door opened and Swee'pea crept in. "How pleasant!" 
But Swee'pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. 
"Thunder 
And tears are unavailing," it read. "Henceforth shall 
Popeye's apartment 
Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or 
scratched." 

Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched 
Her long thigh. "I have news!" she gasped. "Popeye, forced as 
you know to flee the country 
One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, 
duplicate father, jealous of the apartment 
And all that it contains, myself and spinach 
In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder 
At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant 

Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant 
Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the 
scratched 
Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and 
thunder." 
She grabbed Swee'pea. "I'm taking the brat to the country." 
"But you can't do that--he hasn't even finished his spinach," 
Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment. 

But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment 
Succumbed to a strange new hush. "Actually it's quite pleasant 
Here," thought the Sea Hag. "If this is all we need fear from 
spinach 
Then I don't mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon 
over"--she scratched 
One dug pensively--"but Wimpy is such a country 
Bumpkin, always burping like that." Minute at first, the thunder 

Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder, 
The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched 
His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country. 

Dylan Thomas

Notes On The Art Of Poetry

I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books, 
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,, 
such staggering peace, such enormous laughter, 
such and so many blinding bright lights,, ,
splashing all over the pages
in a million bits and pieces
all of which were words, words, words,
and each of which were alive forever
in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.

Dylan Thomas

Augustus John (1937)

Should Lanterns Shine

Should lanterns shine, the holy face, 
Caught in an octagon of unaccustomed light, 
Would wither up, an any boy of love 
Look twice before he fell from grace. 
The features in their private dark 
Are formed of flesh, but let the false day come 
And from her lips the faded pigments fall, 
The mummy cloths expose an ancient breast. 

I have been told to reason by the heart, 
But heart, like head, leads helplessly; 
I have been told to reason by the pulse, 
And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace 
Till field and roof lie level and the same 
So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman 
Whose beard wags in Egyptian wind. 

I have heard may years of telling, 
And many years should see some change. 

The ball I threw while playing in the park 
Has not yet reached the ground.

Dylan Thomas

The Hand That Signed The Paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

Dylan Thomas

My Hero Bares His Nerves

My hero bares his nerves along my wrist

 That rules from wrist to shoulder,

 Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,

 Leans on my mortal ruler,

 The proud spine spurning turn and twist.

 And these poor nerves so wired to the skull

 Ache on the lovelorn paper

 I hug to love with my unruly scrawl

 That utters all love hunger

 And tells the page the empty ill.

 My hero bares my side and sees his heart

 Tread, like a naked Venus,

 The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;

 Stripping my loin of promise,

 He promises a secret heat.

 He holds the wire from the box of nerves

 Praising the mortal error

 Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,

 And the hunger’s emperor;

 He pulls the chain, the cistern moves.

John Ashbery

 

Late Echoes 

  

Alone with our madness and favorite flower 

We see that there really is nothing left to write about. 

Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things 

In the same way, repeating the same things over and over 

For love to continue and be gradually different. 

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally 

And the color of the day put in 

Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter 

For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic 

Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting. 

Only then can the chronic inattention 

Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory 

And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows 

That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge 

Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Loving you less than life, a little less"

Loving you less than life, a little less

Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall

Or bush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess

I cannot swear I love you not at all.

For there is that about you in this light--

A yellow darkness, sinister of rain--

Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

And I am made aware of many a week

I shall consume, remembering in what way

Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,

And what divine absurdities you say:

Till all the world, and I, and surely you,

Will know I love you, whethe

Edna St. Vincent Millay

 “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Benet

 

II 

I think I should have loved you presently, 

And given in earnest words I flung in jest; 

And lifted honest eyes for you to see, 

And caught your hand against my cheek and breast; 

And all my pretty follies flung aside 

That won you to me, and beneath your gaze, 

Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, 

Spread like a chart my little wicked ways. 

I, that had been to you, had you remained, 

But one more waking from a recurrent dream, 

Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained, 

And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme, 

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew 

Who would have loved you in a day or two. 

IV 

I shall forget you presently, my dear, 

So make the most of this, your little day, 

Your little month, your little half a year, 

Ere I forget, or die, or move away, 

And we are done forever; by and by 

I shall forget you, as I said, but now, 

If you entreat me with your loveliest lie 

I will protest you with my favorite vow. 

I would indeed that love were longer-lived, 

And vows were not so brittle as they are, 

But so it is, and nature has contrived 

To struggle on without a break thus far, — 

Whether or not we find what we are seeking 

Is idle, biologically speaking. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Kenneth Koch

A Momentary Longing To Hear Sad Advice From One Long Dead

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat 
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard 
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said 
You are not wearing overcoat. He said, 
You should do as I say not do as I do. 
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was 
Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me 
In his New York apartment sitting on chair 
Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering. 
Look at this photograph said of his mother and father. 
Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out. 
Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture. 
Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said. 
Why don't you ask him? 
Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not. 
Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph. 
Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs. 
Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening 
I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true. 
Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying 
But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

Philip Levine

They Feed They Lion

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, 
Out of black bean and wet slate bread, 
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, 
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, 
They Lion grow. 

Out of the gray hills 
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, 
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, 
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, 
Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch, 
They Lion grow. 

Earth is eating trees, fence posts, 
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones, 
"Come home, Come home!" From pig balls, 
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness, 
From the furred ear and the full jowl come 
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose 
They Lion grow. 

From the sweet glues of the trotters 
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower 
Of the hams the thorax of caves, 
From "Bow Down" come "Rise Up," 
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels, 
The grained arm that pulls the hands, 
They Lion grow. 

From my five arms and all my hands, 
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed, 
From my car passing under the stars, 
They Lion, from my children inherit, 
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion, 
From they sack and they belly opened 
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth 
They feed they Lion and he comes.