Chinese Whispers: Poems by John Ashbery Page B

climate change.
    Beer and pretzels is the one luxury here.
    Tented figures walk the escarpment
    behind which a luxury hotel is planned
    for comic suicides in the next decade.
    If all of us were one
    again, how right life as usual would chime!
    We can’t keep combing out the old process
    and have it rhyme,
    neither can we rest at the table under the shade-
    tree an anonymous donor provided.
    We can only go on extracting fishhooks
    from meanings that were intended to be casual.
    Night settles briskly as with feather duster
    and rag under arm, determined to be not too civilized.
    It seems the sky left us
    hanging, long ago, and now wants us undetermined,
    untried sheep nosing out of mist.
    Be thankful for all you haven’t been, and could be
    in a warier situation. For desk values. The shoehorn.
    Our lives ebbing always toward the center,
    the unframed portrait.

THE SLEEPING ANIMALS
    I forget it. I’ve even
    forgotten that I forgot
    it. So go on with your
    story, but make it
    quick this time.
    As if any admission were a cure ...
    You can thank me for that,
    in fact you can thank me double for that.
    We’re both riding in the same direction,
    and really, how much policing is necessary
    to punish people after dark?
    Night, the sleeping animals—
    it all gets carted away,
    sooner or later. The fife and drum
    rebegin. It’s here that narrative,
    in our sense, implodes.
    The shabby tale that was left
    in the hangar starts to look better, gold
    highlights in the corners of the eyes.
    But for this to happen we have to trust
    the narrator. We must stay vigilant.
    The tale is multicolored, and jerks
    back and forth like the tail of a kite.
    If he was so smart, how come we’re not dumber?
    How come I can see into the epicenter,
    brilliant little ball of cold? Still,
    when it’s over, it’s, like, over.
    The colonel returned to his senses.

DISCLAIMER
    Quiet around here. The neighbors,
    in wider arcs, getting to know each other.
    The fresh falling away.
    A sweetness wells out of the dark about now.
    The explorer angles his telescope
    at frigid violets on a settee.
    A curate is near.
    Frogs and envelopes join in the fun:
    That was some joust! they say. Today we learned two things
    too many: how to whimper, and the secret stasis of land.
    Always, coming home
    you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead.
    The real time of water gives you little wiggling room,
    but it’s all right, because it’s all over.
    Some dream accosted me on the turnpike. I felt straitlaced
    for a moment, then remembered your threnody,
    a cassation of bathtubs and violas d’amore.
    It brought me to passion. I was able to turn back
    with a clean slate, noting possible drifts
    of meaning that disappeared as soon as
    illuminated, then reemerged as from a fit of pique.

DISAGREEABLE GLIMPSES
    After my fall from the sixteenth floor my bones were lovingly assembled. They were transparent. I was carried into the gorgeous dollhouse and placed on a fainting couch upholstered with brilliant poppies. My ship had come in, so to speak.
    There were others, lovers, sitting and speaking nearby. “Are you the Countess of C?” I demanded. She smiled and returned her gaze to the other. Someone brought in a tray of cakes which were distributed to the guests according to a fixed plan. “Here, this one’s for you. Take it.” I looked and saw only a small cat rolling in the snow of the darkened gutter. “If this is mine, then I don’t want it.” Abruptly the chords of a string quartet finished. I was on a shallow porch. The village movie palaces were letting out. I thought I saw a cousin from years back. Before I could call out she turned, sallow. I saw that this was not the person. Conversations continued streaming in the erstwhile twilight, I betook myself to the tollbooth. The pumpkin-yellow sun lit all this up, climbing slowly from ankles to handlebar.
    He had shaved his head some seven years ago. The lovers were bored then. They no longer meandered by the