from SKY BOOTHS IN THE BREATH SOMEWHERE, THE ASHBERY ERASURE BOOK

IN THE MEANTIME, DARLING 

 

 

Time is a cross 

 

There is a feeling you put on 

 

Listen 

Eavesdropping is the only way 

You hand over 

The sea 

 

Hurricane 

A lie and his sister 

Sure times 

 

Purity 

The others bent for later 

No food in his mouth 

 

He comes 

 

Dactyl in the ethnic ballpark 

 

It’s better, this ache 

 

 

 

 

SOMETIMES IN PLACES

 

 

Patient, no poet lies down under the dream.

The sky is cleverer than he.

So what?

The robin builds a nest.

Day weaves a bower.

Self to world: I am standing here listening.

Desire, O accidental man,
the purple plenty dominate our dreams.

Nod and be gay.

You too enter the skirmish of ghosts.

Dragons so blessed with deafness
clamor for lunch.

No, I thought
No, that was mine. 

 

 

 

 

I FOUND THEIR ADVICE

 

 

language itself

A hanging we cling to

now it is half-past five
the learning has begun

Who weren't learning
stopped knowing
the silence

time as a seal,
contained,
not banked:

you don't jostle
the voice,

and the feelings leave 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRICYCLE 

 

 

About this unhappiness: 

Run out and stay a minute, 

Roll up in a blanket. 

 

That’s how they looked, 

Tied to no actual drift. 

 

Spoons were put up for sale. 

 

We stood in our back alleys, 

Chagrin brilliant on our faces. 

 

I don’t know.  Why does one write? 

 

I replied to your waking 

And the affair of sleeping and waking began. 

 

Look, a fish is coming to save us. 

 

Maybe unimportance isn’t such a bad thing after all.