I remember meeting you in a dark dream
Of April, you or some girl,
The necklace of wishes alive and breathing around your throat.
In blindness of that dark whose
Brightness turned to sand salt-gazed in noon sun
We could not know each other or know which part
Belonged to the other, pelted in an electric storm of rain.
Only gradually the mounds that meant our bodies
That wore our selves concaved into view
But intermittently as through dark mist
Smeared against fog. No worse time to have come,
Yet all was desiring through already desired and past,
The moment a monument to itself
No one would ever see or know was there.

That time faded too and the night
Softened to smooth spirals or foliage at night.
There were sleeping cabins near by, bind lanterns,
Nocturnal friendliness of the plate of milk left for the fairies
Who otherwise might be less well disposed:
Friendship of white sheets patched with milk.
And always an open darkness in which one name
Cries over and over again: Ariane! Ariane!
Was it for this you led your sisters back from sleep
And now he of the blue beard has outmaneuvered you?
But for the best perhaps: let
Those sisters slink into the sapphire
Hair that is mounting day.
There are still other made-up countries
Where we can hide forever,
Wasted with eternal desire and sadness,
Sucking the sherberts, crooning the tunes, naming the names.

[end of poem]

New Poem : De Imagine Mundi

The many as noticed by the one:
The noticed one, confusing itself with the many
Yet perceives itself as an individual
Traveling between two fixed points.
Such glance as dares dart out
To pin you in your afternoon lair is only a reflex,
A speech in a play consisting entirely of stage directions
Because there happened to be a hole for it there.
Unfortunately, fewer than one half of one per cent
Recognized the divined gesture as currency
(Which it is, albeit inflated)
And the glance comes to rest on top of a steeple
With about as much interest as a bird's

They had moved out here from Boston
Those two. (The one, a fair sample
Of the fair-sheaved many,
The other boggling into single oddness
Plays at it when he must
Not getting better or younger.)

The weather kept them at their small tasks:
Sorting out the news, mending this and that.
The great poker face impinged on them. And rejoiced
To be a living reproach to
Something new they've got.
Skeeter collecting info: "Did you know
About the Mugwump of the Final Hour?"
Their even flesh tone
A sign of "Day off,"
The buses moving along quite quickly on the nearby island
Also registered, as per his plan.

Taking a path you never saw before
Thought you knew the area
(The many perceive they fight off sleep).
"A few gaffers stay on
To the end of the line
Tho that is between bookends."
The note is struck finally
With just sufficient force but like a thunderbolt
As only the loudest can be imagined.
And they stay on to talk it over.

[end of poem]

New Poem : Foreboding

A breeze off the lake - petal-shaped
Luna-park effects avoid the teasing outline
Of where would be if we were here.
Bombed out of our minds, I think
The way here is too close, too packed
With surges of feeling. It can't be.
The wipeout occurs first at the center,
Now around the edges. A big ugly one
With braces kicking the shit out of a smaller one
Who reaches for a platinum axe stamped excalibur:
Just jungles really. The daytime bars are
Packed but night has more meaning
In the pockets and side vents. I feel as though
Somebody had just brought me an equation.
I say, "I can't answer this - I know
That it's true, please believe me,
I can see the proof, lofty, invisible
In the sky far above the striped awnings. I just see
That I want it to go on, without
Anybody's getting hurt, and for the shuffling
To resume between me and my side of the night."

[end of poem]

New poem : The Tomb of Stuart Merrill

It is the first soir of March
They have taken the plants away.

Martha Hoople wanted a big "gnossienne" hydrangea
Smelling all over of Jicky for her
Card party: the basement couldn't
Hold up all that wildness.

The petits fours have left.

Then up and spake the Major:
The new conservatism is
Sitting down beside you.
Once when the bus slid out past Place Pereire
I caught the lens-cover reflection: lilacs
Won't make much difference it said.

Otherwise in Paris why
You never approved much of my pet remedies.
I spoke once of a palliative for piles
You wouldn't try or admit to trying any other.
Now we live without or rather we get along without
Each other. Each of us does
Live within that conundrum
We don't call living
Both shut up and open.
Can knowledge ever be harmful?
How about a mandate? I think
Of throwing myself on the mercy of the court.

They are bringing the plants back
One by one
In the interstices of heaven, earth and today.

"I have become attracted to your style. You seem to possess within your work an air of total freedom of expression and imagery, somewhat interesting and puzzling. After I read one of your poems, I'm always tempted to read and reread it. It seems that my inexperience holds me back from understanding your meanings.

[this is the last time I'll add commentary here. I don't know how I feel about the above move - the last stanza - on Ashbery's part. This whole poem is particularly strange to me, and this part especially There's definitely something offputtingly narcissistic about the quote, but the way it's inserted - as quoted prose - suggests its meant to be intentionally jarring. Maybe there is something to be said for nakedly including this sort of thing. Not sure. In any case, that's my commentary, back to quoting the rest [this is about the midpoint of the book ] ]

"I really would like to know what it is you do to 'magnetize' your poetry, where the curious reader, always a bit puzzled, comes back for a clearer insight."

The canons are falling
One by one
Including "le célèbre" of Pachelbal
The final movement of Franck's sonata for piano and violin.
How about a new kind of hermetic conservativism
And suffering withdrawal symptoms of the same?

Let's get on with it
But what about the past

Because it only builds up out of fragments.
Each evening we walk out to see
How they are coming along with the temple.
There is an interest in watching how
One piece is added to another.
At least it isn't horrible like
Being inside a hospital and really finding out
What it's like in there.
So one is tempted not to include this page
In the fragment of our lives
Just as its meaning is about to coagulate
In the air around us:

"Father!" "Son!" "Father I thought we'd lost you
In the blue and buff planes of the Aegean:
Now it seems you're really back."
"Only for a while, son, only for a while."
We can go inside now.

[end of poem]

New poem: Tarpaulin

Easing the thing
Into spurts of activity
Before the emptiness of late afternoon
Is a kind of will power
Blaring back its received vision
From a thousand tenement windows
Just before night
Its signal fading

[end of poem]