John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

I

1 1	These decibels
2	Are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound
3	Into which being enters, and is apart.
4	Their colors on a warm February day
5	Make for masses of inertia, and hips
6	Prod out of the violet-seeming into a new kind
7	Of demand that stumps the absolute because not new
8	In the sense of the next one in an infinite series
9	But, as it were, pre-existing or pre-seeming in
10	Such a way as to contrast funnily with the unexpectedness
11	And somehow push us all into perdition.

2 12	Here a scarf flies, there an excited call is heard.

3 13	The answer is that it is novelty
14	That guides these swift blades o’er the ice,
15	Projects into a finer expression (but at the expense
16	Of energy) the profile I cannot remember.
17	Colors slip away from and chide us. The human mind
18	Cannot retain anything except perhaps the dismal two-note theme
19	Of some sodden “dump” or lament.

4 20	But the water surface ripples, the whole light changes.

5 21	We children are ashamed of our bodies
22	But we laugh and, demanded, talk of sex again
23	And all is well. The waves of morning harshness
24	Float away like coal-gas into the sky.
25	But how much survives? How much of any one of us survives?
26	The articles we’d collect—stamps of the colonies
27	With greasy cancellation marks, mauve, magenta and chocolate,
28	Or funny-looking dogs we’d see in the street, or bright remarks.
29	One collects bullets. An Indianapolis, Indiana man collects slingshots of all epochs, and so on.

6 30	Subtracted from our collections, though, these go on a little while, collecting aimlessly. We still support them.
31	But so little energy they have! And up the swollen sands
32	Staggers the darkness fiend, with the storm fiend close behind him!
33	True, melodious tolling does go on in that awful pandemonium,
34	Certain resonances are not utterly displeasing to the terrified eardrum.
35	Some paroxysms are dinning of tambourine, others suggest piano room or organ loft
36	For the most dissonant night charms us, even after death. This, after all, may be happiness: tuba notes awash on the great flood, ruptures of xylophone, violins, limpets, grace-notes, the musical instrument called serpent, viola da gambas, aeolian harps, clavicles, pinball machines, electric drills, que sais-je encore!
37	The performance has rapidly reached your ear; silent and tear-stained, in the post-mortem shock, you stand listening, awash
38	With memories of hair in particular, part of the welling that is you,
39	The gurgling of harp, cymbal, glockenspiel, triangle, temple block, English horn and metronome! And still no presentiment, no feeling of pain before or after.
40	The passage sustains, does not give. And you have come far indeed.

7 41	Yet to go from “not interesting” to “old and uninteresting,”
42	To be surrounded by friends, though late in life,
43	To hear the wings of the spirit, though far. . . .
44	Why do I hurriedly undrown myself to cut you down?
45	“I am yesterday,” and my fault is eternal.
46	I do not expect constant attendance, knowing myself insufficient for your present demands
47	And I have a dim intuition that I am that other “I” with which we began.
48	My cheeks as blank walls to your tears and eagerness
49	Fondling that other, as though you had let him get away forever.

8 50	The evidence of the visual henceforth replaced
51	By the great shadow of trees falling over life.

9 52	A child’s devotion
53	To this normal, shapeless entity. . . .

10 54	Forgotten as the words fly briskly across, each time
55	Bringing down meaning as snowflakes from a low sky, or rabbits flushed from a wood.
56	How strange that the narrow perspective lines
57	Always seem to meet, although parallel, and that an insane ghost could do this,
58	Could make the house seem so much farther in the distance, as
59	It seemed to the horse, dragging the sledge of a perspective line.
60	Dim banners in the distance, to die. . . . And nothing put to rights. The pigs in their cages

11 61	And so much snow, but it is to be littered with waste and ashes
62	So that cathedrals may grow. Out of this spring builds a tolerable
63	Affair of brushwood, the sea is felt behind oak wands, noiselessly pouring.
64	Spring with its promise of winter, and the black ivy once again
65	On the porch, its yellow perspective bands in place
66	And the horse nears them and weeps.

12 67	So much has passed through my mind this morning
68	That I can give you but a dim account of it:
69	It is already after lunch, the men are returning to their positions around the cement mixer
70	And I try to sort out what has happened to me. The bundle of Gerard’s letters,
71	And that awful bit of news buried on the back page of yesterday’s paper.
72	Then the news of you this morning, in the snowflakes. Sometimes the interval
73	Of bad news is so brisk that . . . And the human brain, with its tray of images
74	Seems a sorcerer’s magic lantern, projecting black and orange cellophane shadows
75	On the distance of my hand . . . The very reaction’s puny,
76	And when we seek to move around, wondering what our position is now, what the arm of that chair.

13 77	A great wind lifted these cardboard panels
78	Horizontal in the air. At once the perspective with the horse
79	Disappeared in a bigarrure of squiggly lines. The image with the crocodile in it became no longer apparent.
80	Thus a great wind cleanses, as a new ruler
81	Edits new laws, sweeping the very breath of the streets
82	Into posterior trash. The films have changed—
83	The great titles on the scalloped awning have turned dry and blight-colored.
84	No wind that does not penetrate a man’s house, into the very bowels of the furnace,
85	Scratching in dust a name on the mirror—say, and what about letters,
86	The dried grasses, fruits of the winter—gosh! Everything is trash!
87	The wind points to the advantages of decay
88	At the same time as removing them far from the sight of men.
89	The regent of the winds, Aeolus, is a symbol for all earthly potentates
90	Since holding this sickening, festering process by which we are cleansed
91	Of afterthought.
92	A girl slowly descended the line of steps.

14 93

The wind and treason are partners, turning secrets over to the military police.

15 94	Lengthening arches. The intensity of minor acts. As skaters elaborate their distances,
95	Taking a separate line to its end. Returning to the mass, they join each other
96	Blotted in an incredible mess of dark colors, and again reappearing to take the theme
97	Some little distance, like fishing boats developing from the land different parabolas,
98	Taking the exquisite theme far, into farness, to Land’s End, to the ends of the earth!

16 99	But the livery of the year, the changing air
100	Bring each to fulfillment. Leaving phrases unfinished,
101	Gestures half-sketched against woodsmoke. The abundant sap
102	Oozes in girls’ throats, the sticky words, half-uttered, unwished for,
103	A blanket disbelief, quickly supplanted by idle questions that fade in turn.
104	Slowly the mood turns to look at itself as some urchin
105	Forgotten by the roadside. New schemes are got up, new taxes,
106	Earthworks. And the hours becomes light again.
107	Girls wake up in it.

17 108	It is best to remain indoors. Because there is error
109	In so much precision. As flames are fanned, wishful thinking arises
110	Bearing its own prophets, its pointed ignoring. And just as a desire
111	Settles down at the end of a long spring day, over heather and watered shoot and dried rush field,
112	So error is plaited into desires not yet born.

18 113	Therefore the post must be resumed (is being falsified
114	To be forever involved, tragically, with one’s own image?).
115	The studio light suddenly invaded the long casement—values were what
116	She knows now. But the floor is being slowly pulled apart
117	Like straw under those limpid feet.
118	And Helga, in the minuscule apartment in Jersey City
119	Is reacting violet to the same land of dress, is drawing death
120	Again in blossoms against the reactionary fire . . . pulsing
121	And knowing nothing to superb lambent distances that intercalate
122	This city. Is the death of the cube repeated. Or in the musical album.

19 123	It is time now for a general understanding of
124	The meaning of all this. The meaning of Helga, importance of the setting, etc.
125	A description of the blues. Labels on bottles
126	And all kinds of discarded objects that ought to be described.
127	But can one ever be sure of which ones?
128	Isn’t this a death-trap, wanting to put too much in
129	So the floor sags, as under the weight of a piano, or a piano-legged girl
130	And the whole house of cards comes dinning down around one’s ears!

20 131	But this is an important aspect of the question
132	Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready to,
133	This leaving-out business. On it hinges the very importance of what’s novel
134	Or autocratic, or dense or silly. It is as well to call attention
135	To it by exaggeration, perhaps. But calling attention
136	Isn’t the same thing as explaining, and as I said I am not ready
137	To line phrases with the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not,
138	Will not do so for the moment. Except to say that the carnivorous
139	Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving
140	Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves presence, but still.
141	Nevertheless these are fundamental absences, struggling to get up and be off themselves.

21 142	This, thus is a portion of the subject of this poem
143	Which is in the form of falling snowflakes:
144	That is, the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the whole’s becoming so much of a truism
145	That their importance is again called in question, to be denied further out, and again and again like this.
146	Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,
147	Nor the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is what it is,
148	But the rhythm of the series of repeated jumps, from abstract into positive and back to a slightly less diluted abstract.

22 149

Mild effects are the result.

23 150	I cannot think any more of going out into all that, will stay here
151	With my quiet schmerzen. Besides the storm is almost over
152	Having frozen the face of the bust into a strange style with the lips
153	And the teeth the most distinct part of the whole business.

24 154

It is this madness to explain. . . .

25 155	What is the matter with plain old-fashioned cause-and-effect?
156	Leaving one alone with romantic impressions of the trees, the sky?
157	Who, actually, is going to be fooled one instant by these phony explanations,
158	Think them important? So back we go to the old, imprecise feelings, the
159	Common knowledge, the importance of duly suffering and the occasional glimpses
160	Of some balmy felicity. The world of Schubert’s lieder. I am fascinated
161	Though by the urge to get out of it all, by going
162	Further in and correcting the whole mismanaged mess. But am afraid I’ll
163	Be of no help to you. Good-bye.

26 164	As balloons are to the poet, so to the ground
165	Its varied assortment of trees. The more assorted they are, the
166	Vaster his experience. Sometimes
167	You catch sight of them on a level with the top story of a house,
168	Strung up there for publicity purposes. Or like those bubbles
169	Children make with a kind of ring, not a pipe, and probably using some detergent
170	Rather than plain everyday soap and water. Where was I? The balloons
171	Drift thoughtfully over the land, not exactly commenting on it;
172	These are the range of the poet’s experience. He can hide in trees
173	Like a hamadryad, but wisely prefers not to, letting the balloons
174	Idle him out of existence, as a car idles. Traveling faster
175	And more furiously across unknown horizons, belted into the night
176	Wishing more and more to be unlike someone, getting the whole thing
177	(So he believes) out of his system. Inventing systems.
178	We are a part of some system, thinks he, just as the sun is part of
179	The solar system. Trees brake his approach. And he seems to be wearing but
180	Half a coat, viewed from one side. A “half-man” look inspiring the disgust of honest folk
181	Returning from chores, the milk frozen, the pump heaped high with a chapeau of snowflakes,
182	The “No Skating” sign as well. But it is here that he is best,
183	Face to face with the unsmiling alternatives of his nerve-wracking existence.
184	Placed squarely in front of his dilemma, on all fours before the lamentable spectacle of the unknown.
185	Yet knowing where men are coming from. It is this, to hold the candle up to the album.

II

27 186

Under the window marked “General Delivery” . . .

28 187	This should be a letter
188	Throwing you a minute to one side,
189	Of how this tossing looks harmonious from a distance,
190	Like sea or the tops of trees, and how
191	Only when one gets closer is its sadness small and appreciable.
192	It can be held in the hand.

29 193	All this must go into a letter.
194	Also the feeling of being lived, looking for people,
195	And gradual peace and relaxation.

30 196	But there’s no personal involvement:
197	These sudden bursts of hot and cold
198	Are wreathed in shadowless intensity
199	Whose moment saps them of all characteristics.
200	Thus beginning to rest you at once know.

31 201	Once there was a point in these islands,
202	Coming to see where the rock had rotted away,
203	And turning into a tiny speck in the distance.

32 204	But war’s savagery. . . . Even the most patient scholar, now
205	Could hardly reconstruct the old fort exactly as it was.
206	That trees continue to wave over it. That there is also a small museum somewhere inside.
207	That the history of costume is no less fascinating than the history of great migrations.
208	I’d like to bugger you all up,
209	Deliberately falsify all your old suck-ass notions
210	Of how chivalry is being lived. What goes on in beehives.
211	But the whole filthy mess, misunderstandings included,
212	Problems about the tunic button etc. How much of any one person is there.

33 213	Still, after bananas and spoonbread in the shadow of the old walls
214	It is cooling to return under the eaves in the shower
215	That probably fell while we were inside, examining bowknots,
216	Old light-bulb sockets, places where the whitewash had begun to flake
217	With here and there an old map or illustration. Here’s one for instance—
218	Looks like a weather map . . . or a coiled bit of wallpaper with a design
219	Of faded hollyhocks, or abstract fruit and gumdrops in chains.

34 220	But how is it that you are always indoors, peering at too heavily canceled stamps through a greasy magnifying glass?
221	And slowly the incoherencies of day melt in
222	A general wishful thinking of night
223	To peruse certain stars over the bay.
224	Cataracts of peace pour from the poised heavens
225	And only fear of snakes prevents us from passing the night in the open air.
226	The day is definitely at an end.

35 227	Old heavens, you used to tweak above us,
228	Standing like rain whenever a salvo . . . Old heavens,
229	You lying there above the old, but not ruined, fort,
230	Can you hear, there, what I am saying?

36 231	For it is you I am parodying,
232	Your invisible denials. And the almost correct impressions
233	Corroborated by newsprint, which is so fine.
234	I call to you there, but I do not think that you will answer me.

37 235	For I am condemned to drum my fingers
236	On the closed lid of this piano, this tedious planet, earth
237	As it winks to you through the aspiring, growing distances,
238	A last spark before the night.

38 239	There was much to be said in favor of storms
240	But you seem to have abandoned them in favor of endless light.
241	I cannot say that I think the change much of an improvement.
242	There is something fearful in these summer nights that go on forever. . . .

39 243	We are nearing the Moorish coast, I think, in a bateau.
244	I wonder if I will have any friends there
245	Whether the future will be kinder to me than the past, for example,
246	And am all set to be put out, finding it to be not.

40 247	Still, I am prepared for this voyage, and for anything else you may care to mention.
248	Not that I am not afraid, but there is very little time left.
249	You have probably made travel arrangements, and know the feeling.
250	Suddenly, one morning, the little train arrives in the station, but oh, so big

41 251	It is! Much bigger and faster than anyone told you.
252	A bewhiskered student in an old baggy overcoat is waiting to take it.
253	“Why do you want to go there,” they all say. “It is better in the other direction.”
254	And so it is. There people are free, at any rate. But where you are going no one is.

42 255	Still there are parks and libraries to be visited, “la Bibliothèque Municipale,”
256	Hotel reservations and all that rot. Old American films dubbed into the foreign language,
257	Coffee and whiskey and cigar stubs. Nobody minds. And rain on the bristly wool of your topcoat.
258	I realize that I never knew why I wanted to come.

43 259	Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic,
260	Its sailboats are perhaps more beautiful than these, these I am leaning against,
261	Spangled with diamonds and orange and purple stains,
262	Bearing me once again in quest of the unknown. These sails are life itself to me.

44 263	I heard a girl say this once, and cried, and brought her fresh fruit and fishes,
264	Olives and golden baked loaves. She dried her tears and thanked me.
265	Now we are both setting sail into the purplish evening.
266	I love it! This cruise can never last long enough for me.

45 267	But once more, office desks, radiators—No! That is behind me.
268	No more dullness, only movies and love and laughter, sex and fun.
269	The ticket seller is blowing his little horn—hurry before the window slams down.
270	The train we are getting onto is a boat train, and the boats are really boats this time.

46 271	But I heard the heavens say—Is it right? This continual changing back and forth?
272	Laughter and tears and so on? Mightn’t just plain sadness be sufficient for him?
273	No! I’ll not accept that any more, you bewhiskered old caverns of blue!
274	This is just right for me. I am cozily ensconced in the balcony of my face

47 275	Looking out over the whole darn countryside, a beacon of satisfaction
276	I am. I’ll not trade places with a king. Here I am then, continuing but ever beginning
277	My perennial voyage, into new memories, new hope and flowers
278	The way the coasts glide past you. I shall never forget this moment

48 279	Because it consists of purest ecstasy. I am happier now than I ever dared believe
280	Anyone could be. And we finger down the dog-eared coasts. . . .
281	It is all passing! It is past! No, I am here,
282	Bellow the coasts, and even the heavens roar their assent

49 283	As we pick up a lemon-colored light horizontally
284	Projected into the night, the night that heaven
285	Was kind enough to send, and I launch into the happiest dreams,
286	Happier once again, because tomorrow is already here.

50 287	Yet certain kernels remain. Clouds that drift past sheds—
288	Read it in the official bulletin. We shan’t be putting out today.
289	The old stove smoked worse than ever because rain was coming down its chimney.
290	Only the bleary eye of fog accosted one through the mended pane.

51 291	Outside, the swamp water lapped the broken wood step.
292	A rowboat was moored in the alligator-infested swamp.
293	Somewhere, from deep in the interior of the jungle, a groan was heard.
294	Could it be . . .? Anyway, a rainy day—wet weather.

52 295	The whole voyage will have to be canceled.
296	It would be impossible to make different connections.
297	Anyway the hotels are all full at this season. The junks packed with refugees
298	Returning from the islands. Sea-bream and flounder abound in the muddied waters. . . .

53 299	They in fact represent the backbone of the island economy.
300	That, and cigar rolling. Please leave your papers at the desk as you pass out,
301	You know. “The Wedding March.” Ah yes, that’s the way. The couple descend
302	The steps of the little old church. Ribbons are flung, ribbons of cloud

54 303	And the sun seems to be coming out. But there have been so many false alarms. . . .
304	No, it’s happened! The storm is over. Again the weather is fine and clear.
305	And the voyage? It’s on! Listen everybody, the ship is starting,
306	I can hear its whistle’s roar! We have just time enough to make it to the dock!

55 307	And away they pour, in the sulfurous sunlight,
308	To the aqua and silver waters where stands the glistening white ship
309	And into the great vessel they flood, a motley and happy crowd
310	Chanting and pouring down hymns on the surface of the ocean. . . .

56 311	Pulling, tugging us along with them, by means of streamers,
312	Golden and silver confetti. Smiling, we laugh and sing with the revelers
313	But are not quite certain that we want to go—the dock is so sunny and warm.
314	That majestic ship will pull up anchor who knows where?

57 315	And full of laughter and tears, we sidle once again with the other passengers.
316	The ground is heaving under foot. Is it the ship? It could be the dock. . . .
317	And with a great whoosh all the sails go up. . . . Hideous black smoke belches forth from the funnels
318	Smudging the gold carnival costumes with the gaiety of its jet-black soot

58 319	And, as into a tunnel the voyage starts
320	Only, as I said, to be continued. The eyes of those left standing on the dock are wet
321	But ours are dry. Into the secretive, vaporous night with all of us!
322	Into the unknown, the unknown that loves us, the great unknown!

59 323	So man nightly
324	Sparingly descends
325	The birches and the hay         all of him
326	Pruned, erect for vital contact. As the separate mists of day slip
327	Uncomplainingly into the atmosphere. Loving you? The question sinks into

60 328	That mazy business
329	About writing or to have read it in some book
330	To silently move away. At Gannosfonadiga the pumps
331	Working, argent in the thickening sunset, like boys’ shoulders

61 332	And you return to the question as to a calendar of November
333	Again and again consulting the surface of that enormous affair
334	I think not to have loved you            but the music
335	Petting the enameled           slow-imagined stars

62 336	A concert of dissatisfaction whereby           gutter and dust seep
337	To engross the mirrored image and its landscape:

63 338	As when
339	through darkness and mist
340	the pole-bringer
341	demandingly watches
342	I am convinced these things are of some importance.

64 343	Firstly, it is a preparing to go outward
344	Of no planet limiting the enjoyment
345	Of motion—hips free of embarrassment etc.

65 346	The figure 8 is a perfect symbol
347	Of the freedom to be gained in this kind of activity.
348	The perspective lines of the barn are another and different kind of example
349	(Viz. “Rigg’s Farm, near Aysgarth, Wensleydale,” or the “Sketch at Norton”)
350	In which we escape ourselves—putrefying mass of prevarications etc.—
351	In remaining close to the limitations imposed.

66 352	Another example is this separate dying
353	Still keeping in mind the coachmen, servant girls, duchesses, etc. (cf. Jeremy Taylor)
354	Falling away, rhythm of too-wet snowflakes, but parallel
355	With the kind of rhythm substituting for “meaning.”

67 356	Looked at from this angle the problem of death and survival
357	Ages slightly. For the solutions are millionfold, like waves of wild geese returning in spring.
358	Scarcely we know where to turn to avoid suffering, I mean
359	There are so many places.

68 360

So, coachman-servile, or scullion-slatternly, but each place is taken.

69 361	The lines that draw nearer together are said to “vanish.”
362	The point where they meet is their vanishing point.

70 363

Spaces, as they recede, become smaller.

71 364	But another, more urgent question imposes itself—that of poverty.
365	How to excuse it to oneself? The wetness and coldness? Dirt and grime?
366	Uncomfortable, unsuitable lodgings, with a depressing view?
367	The peeled geranium flowering in a rusted tomato can,
368	Framed in a sickly ray of sunlight, a tragic chromo?

72 369	A broken mirror nailed up over a chipped enamel basin, whose turgid waters
370	Reflect the fly-specked calendar—with ecstatic Dutch girl clasping tulips—
371	On the far wall. Hanging from one nail, an old velvet hat with a tattered bit of veiling—last remnant of former finery.
372	The bed well made. The whole place scrupulously clean, but cold and damp.

73 373

All this, wedged into a pyramidal ray of light, is my own invention.

74 374	But to return to our tomato can—those spared by the goats
375	Can be made into a practical telephone, the two halves being connected by a length of wire.
376	You can talk to your friend in the next room, or around corners.
377	An American inventor made a fortune with just such a contraption.
378	The branches tear at the sky—

75 379	Things too tiny to be remembered in recorded history— the backfiring of a bus
380	In a Paris street in 1932, and all the clumsy seductions and amateur paintings done,
381	Clamber to join in the awakening
382	To take a further role in my determination. These clown-shapes
383	Filling up the available space for miles, like acres of red and mustard pom-poms
384	Dusted with a pollen we call “an air of truth.” Massed mounds
385	Of Hades it is true. I propose a general housecleaning
386	Of these true and valueless shapes which pester us with their raisons d’être
387	Whom no one (that is their weakness) can ever get to like.

76 388	There are moving parts to be got out of order,
389	However, in the flame fountain. Add gradually one ounce, by measure, of sulphuric acid
390	To five or six ounces of water in an earthenware basin. Add to it, also gradually, about three-quarters of an ounce of granulated zinc.
391	A rapid production of hydrogen gas will instantly take place. Then add,
392	From time to time, a few pieces of phosphorus the size of a pea.
393	A multitude of gas bubbles will be produced, which will fire on the surface of the effervescing liquid.
394	The whole surface of the liquid will become luminous, and fire balls, with jets of fire,
395	Will dart from the bottom, through the fluid with great rapidity and a hissing noise.

77 396

Sure, but a simple shelter from this or other phenomena is easily contrived.

78 397	But how luminous the fountain! Its sparks seem to aspire to reach the sky!
398	And so much energy in those bubbles. A wise man could contemplate his face in them
399	With impunity, but fools would surely do better not to approach too close
400	Because any intense physical activity like that implies danger for the unwary and the uneducated. Great balls of fire!
401	In my day we used to make “fire designs,” using a saturated solution of nitrate of potash.
402	Then we used to take a smooth stick, and using the solution as ink, draw with it on sheets of white tissue paper.
403	Once it was thoroughly dry, the writing would be invisible.
404	By means of a spark from a smoldering match ignite the potassium nitrate at any part of the drawing,
405	First laying the paper on a plate or tray in a darkened room.
406	The fire will smolder along the line of the invisible drawing until the design is complete.

79 407	Meanwhile the fire fountain is still smoldering and welling,
408	Casting off a hellish stink and wild fumes of pitch
409	Acrid as jealousy. And it might be
410	That flame writing might be visible right there, in the gaps in the smoke
411	Without going through the bother of the solution-writing.
412	A word here and there—“promise” or “beware”— you have to go the long way round
413	Before you find the entrance to that side is closed.
414	The phosphorescent liquid is still heaving and boiling, however.
415	And what if this insane activity were itself a kind of drawing
416	Of April sidewalks, and young trees bursting into timid leaf
417	And dogs sniffing hydrants, the fury of spring beginning to back up along their veins?
418	Yonder stand a young boy and girl leaning against a bicycle.
419	The iron lamppost next to them disappears into the feathery, unborn leaves that suffocate its top.

80 420	A postman is coming up the walk, a letter held in his outstretched hand.
421	This is his first day on the new job, and he looks warily around
422	Alas not seeing the hideous bulldog bearing down on him like sixty, its hellish eyes fixed on the seat of his pants, jowls a-slaver.
423	Nearby a young woman is fixing her stocking. Watching her, a chap with a hat
424	Is about to walk into the path of a speeding hackney cabriolet. The line of lampposts
425	Marches up the street in strict array, but the lamp-parts
426	Are lost in feathery bloom, in which hidden faces can be spotted, for this is a puzzle scene.
427	The sky is white, yet full of outlined stars—it must be night,
428	Or an early springtime evening, with just a hint of dampness and chill in the air—
429	Memory of winter, hint of the autumn to come—
430	Yet the lovers congregate anyway, the lights twinkle slowly on.
431	Cars move steadily along the street.
432	It is a scene worthy of the poet’s pen, yet it is the fire demon
433	Who has created it, throwing it up on the dubious surface of a phosphorescent fountain
434	For all the world like a poet. But love can appreciate it,
435	Use or misuse it for its own ends. Love is stronger than fire.

81 436	The proof of this is that already the heaving, sucking fountain is paling away
437	Yet the fire-lines of the lovers remain fixed, as if permanently, on the air of the lab.
438	Not for long though. And now they too collapse,
439	Giving, as they pass away, the impression of a bluff,
440	Its craggy headlands outlined in sparks, its top crowned with a zigzag
441	Of grass and shrubs, pebbled beach at the bottom, with flat sea
442	Holding a few horizontal lines. Then this vision, too, fades slowly away.

III

82 443	Now you must shield with your body if necessary ( you
444	Remind me of some lummox I used to know) the secret your body is.
445	Yes, you are a secret and you must NEVER tell it—the vapor
446	Of the stars would quickly freeze you to death, like a tear-stiffened handkerchief
447	Held in liquid air. No, but this secret is in some way the fuel of
448	Your living apart. A hearth fire picked up in the glow of polished
449	Wooden furniture and picture frames, something to turn away from and move back to—
450	Understand? This is all a part of you and the only part of you.

83 451		Here comes the answer: is it because apples grow
452		On the tree, or because it is green? One average day you may never know
453		How much is pushed back into the night, nor what may return
454		To sulk contentedly, half asleep and half awake
455		By the arm of a chair pointed into
456		The painting of the hearth fire, or reach, in a coma,
457		Out of the garden for foreign students.
458		Be sure the giant would know falling asleep, but the frozen droplets reveal
459		A mixed situation in which the penis
460		Scored the offer by fixed marches into what is.
461		One black spot remained.

84 462	If I should . . . If I said you were there
463	The . . . towering peace around us might
464	Hold up the way it breaks—the monsoon
465	Move a pebble, to the plumbing contract, cataract.
466	There has got to be only—there is going to be
467	An accent on the portable bunch of grapes
468	The time the mildewed sea cast the
469	Hygrometer too far away. You read into it
470	The meaning of tears, survey of our civilization.

85 471		Only one thing exists: the fear of death. As widows are a prey to loan sharks
472		And Cape Hatteras to hurricanoes, so man to the fear of dying, to the
473		Certainty of falling. And just so it permits him to escape from time to time
474		Amid fields of boarded-up posters: “Objects, as they recede, appear to become smaller
475		And all horizontal receding lines have their vanishing point upon the line of sight,”
476		Which is some comfort after all, for our volition to see must needs condition these phenomena to a certain degree.
477		But it would be rash to derive too much confidence from a situation which, in the last analysis, scarcely warrants it.
478		What I said first goes: sleep, death and hollyhocks
479		And a new twilight stained, perhaps, a slightly unearthlier periwinkle blue,
480		But no dramatic arguments for survival, and please no magic justification of results.

86 481	Uh . . . stupid song . . . that weather bonnet
482	Is all gone now. But the apothecary biscuits dwindled.
483	Where a little spectral
484	Cliffs, teeming over into irony’s
485	Gotten silently inflicted on the passages
486	Morning undermines, the daughter is.

87 487		Its oval armor
488		Protects it then, and the poisonous filaments hanging down
489		Are armor as well, or are they the creature itself, screaming
490		To protect itself? An aggressive weapon, as well as a plan of defense?
491		Nature is still liable to pull a few fast ones, which is why I can’t emphasize enough
492		The importance of adhering to my original program. Remember,
493		No hope is to be authorized except in exceptional cases
494		To be decided on by me. In the meantime, back to dreaming,
495		Your most important activity.

88 496	The most difficult of all is an arrangement of hawthorn leaves.
497	But the sawing motion of desire, throwing you a moment to one side . . .
498	And then the other, will, I think, permit you to forget your dreams for a little while.
499	In reality you place too much importance on them. “Frei aber Einsam” (Free but Alone)
500	Ought to be your motto. If you dream at all, place a cloth over your face:
501	Its expression of satisfied desire might be too much for some spectators.

89 502		The west wind grazes my cheek, the droplets come pattering down;
503		What matter now whether I wake or sleep?
504		The west wind grazes my cheek, the droplets come pattering down;
505		A vast design shows in the meadow’s parched and trampled grasses.
506		Actually a game of “fox and geese” has been played there, but the real reality,
507		Beyond truer imaginings, is that it is a mystical design full of a certain significance,
508		Burning, sealing its way into my consciousness.
509		Smooth out the sad flowers, pick up where you left off
510		But leave me immersed in dreams of sexual imagery:
511		Now that the homecoming geese unfurl in waves on the west wind
512		And cock covers hen, the farmhouse dog slavers over his bitch, and horse and mare go screwing through the meadow!
513		A pure scream of things arises from these various sights and smells
514		As steam from a wet shingle, and I am happy once again
515		Walking among these phenomena that seem familiar to me from my earliest childhood.

90 516	The gray wastes of water surround
517	My puny little shoal. Sometimes storms roll
518	Tremendous billows far up on the gray sand beach, and the morning
519	After, odd tusked monsters lie stinking in the sun.
520	They are inedible. For food there is only
521	Breadfruit, and berries garnered in the jungle’s inner reaches,
522	Wrested from scorpion and poisonous snake. Fresh water is a problem.
523	After a rain you may find some nestling in the hollow trunk of a tree, or in hollow stones.

91 524	One’s only form of distraction is really
525	To climb to the top of the one tall cliff to scan the distances.
526	Not for a ship, of course—this island is far from all the trade routes—
527	But in hopes of an unusual sight, such as a school of dolphins at play,
528	A whale spouting, or a cormorant bearing down on its prey.
529	So high this cliff is that the pebble beach far below seems made of gravel.
530	Halfway down, the crows and choughs look like bees.
531	Near by are the nests of vultures. They cluck sympathetically in my direction,
532	Which will not prevent them from rending me limb from limb once I have keeled over definitively.
533	Further down, and way over to one side, are eagles;
534	Always fussing, fouling their big nests, they always seem to manage to turn their backs to you.
535	The glass is low; no doubt we are in for a storm.

92 536	Sure enough: in the pale gray and orange distances to the left, a
537	Waterspout is becoming distinctly visible.
538	Beautiful, but terrifying;
539	Delicate, transparent, like a watercolor by that nineteenth-century Englishman whose name I forget.
540	(I am beginning to forget everything on this island. If only I had been allowed to bring my ten favorite books with me—
541	But a weathered child’s alphabet is my only reading material. Luckily,
542	Some of the birds and animals on the island are pictured in it—the albatross, for instance—that’s a name I never would have remembered.)

93 543	It looks as though the storm-fiend were planning to kick up quite a ruckus
544	For this evening. I had better be getting back to the tent
545	To make sure everything is shipshape, weight down the canvas with extra stones,
546	Bank the fire, and prepare myself a little hardtack and tea
547	For the evening’s repast. Still, it is rather beautiful up here,
548	Watching the oncoming storm. Now the big cloud that was in front of the waterspout
549	Seems to be lurching forward, so that the waterspout, behind it, looks more like a three-dimensional photograph.
550	Above me, the sky is a luminous silver-gray. Yet rain, like silver porcupine quills, has begun to be thrown down.
551	All the lightning is still contained in the big black cloud however. Now thunder claps belch forth from it,
552	Causing the startled vultures to fly forth from their nests.
553	I really had better be getting back down, I suppose.

94 554	Still it is rather fun to linger on in the wet,
555	Letting your clothes get soaked. What difference does it make? No one will scold me for it,
556	Or look askance. Supposing I catch cold? It hardly matters, there are no nurses or infirmaries here
557	To make an ass of one. A really serious case of pneumonia would suit me fine.
558	Ker-choo! There, now I’m being punished for saying so. Aw, what’s the use.
559	I really am starting down now. Good-bye, storm-fiend. Good-bye, vultures.

95 560	In reality of course the middle-class apartment I live in is nothing like a desert island.
561	Cozy and warm it is, with a good library and record collection.
562	Yet I feel cut off from the life in the streets.
563	Automobiles and trucks plow by, spattering me with filthy slush.
564	The man in the street turns his face away. Another island-dweller, no doubt.
565	In a store or crowded café, you get a momentary impression of warmth:
566	Steam pours out of the espresso machine, fogging the panes with their modern lettering
567	Of a kind that has only been available for about a year. The headlines offer you
568	News that is so new you can’t realize it yet. A revolution in Argentina! Think of it! Bullets flying through the air, men on the move;
569	Great passions inciting to massive expenditures of energy, changing the lives of many individuals.
570	Yet it is all offered as “today’s news,” as if we somehow had a right to it, as though it were a part of our lives
571	That we’d be silly to refuse. Here, have another—crime or revolution? Take your pick.

96 572	None of this makes any difference to professional exiles like me, and that includes everybody in the place.
573	We go on sipping our coffee, thinking dark or transparent thoughts . . .
574	Excuse me, may I have the sugar. Why certainly—pardon me for not having passed it to you.
575	A lot of bunk, none of them really care whether you get any sugar or not.
576	Just try asking for something more complicated and see how far it gets you.
577	Not that I care anyway, being an exile. Nope, the motley spectacle offers no charms whatsoever for me—
578	And yet—and yet I feel myself caught up in its coils—
579	Its defectuous movement is that of my reasoning powers—
580	The main point has already changed, but the masses continue to tread the water
581	Of backward opinion, living out their mandate as though nothing had happened.
582	We step out into the street, not realizing that the street is different,
583	And so it shall be all our lives; only, from this moment on, nothing will ever be the same again. Fortunately our small pleasures and the monotony of daily existence
584	Are safe. You will wear the same clothes, and your friends will still want to see you for the same reasons— you fill a definite place in their lives, and they would be sorry to see you go.

97 585	There has, however, been this change, so complete as to be invisible:
586	You might call it . . . “passion” might be a good word.
587	I think we will call it that for easy reference. This room, now, for instance, is all black and white instead of blue.
588	A few snowflakes are floating in the airshaft. Across the way
589	The sun was sinking, casting gray
590	Shadows on the front of the buildings.

98 591	Lower your left shoulder.
592	Stand still and do not seesaw with your body.

99 593

Any more golfing hints, Charlie?

100 594	Plant your feet squarely. Grasp your club lightly but firmly in the hollow of your fingers.
595	Slowly swing well back and complete your stroke well through, pushing to the very end.

101 596

“All up and down de whole creation,” like magic-lantern slides projected on the wall of a cavern: castles, enchanted gardens, etc.

102 597	The usual anagrams of moonlight—a story
598	That subsides quietly into plain historical fact.
599	You have chosen the customary images of youth, old age and death
600	To keep harping on this traditional imagery. The reader

103 601	Will not have been taken in.
602	He will have managed to find out all about it, the way people do.
603	The moonlight congress backs out then. And with a cry
604	He throws the whole business into the flames: books, notes, pencil diagrams, everything.

104 605	No, the only thing that interests him is day
606	And its problems. Freiheit! Freiheit! To be out of these dusty cells once and for all
607	Has been the dream of mankind since the beginning of the universe.

105 608	His day is breaking over the eastern mountains, at least that’s the way he tells it.
609	Only the crater of becoming—a sealed consciousness—resists the profaning mass of the sun.
610	You who automatically sneer at everything that comes along, except your own work, of course,
611	Now feel the curious force of the invasion; its soldiers, all and some,
612	A part of you the minute they appear. It is as though workmen in blue overalls
613	Were constantly bringing on new props and taking others away: that is how you feel the drama going past you, powerless to act in it.
614	To have it all be over! To wake suddenly on a hillside
615	With a valley far below—the clouds—

106 616	That is the penance you have already done:
617	January, March, February. You are living toward a definition
618	Of the peaceful appetite, then you see
619	Them standing around limp and hungry like adjacent clouds.

107 620	Soon there is to be exchange of ideas and
621	Far more beautiful handshake, under the coat of
622	Weather is undecided right now.
623	Postpone the explanation.
624	The election is to be held tomorrow, under the trees.

108 625	You felt the months keep coming up
626	And it is December again,
627	The snowflakes outside. Or is it June full of sun"
628	And the prudent benefits of sun, but still the postman comes.
629	The true meaning of some of his letters is slight—

109 630	Another time I thought I could see myself.
631	This too proved illusion, but I could deal with the way
632	I keep returning on myself like a plank
633	Like a small boat blown away from the wind.

110 634	It all ends in a smile somewhere,
635	Notes to be taken on all this,
636	And you can see in the dark, of which the night
637	Is the continuation of your ecstasy and apprehension.

IV

111 638	The wind thrashes the maple seed-pods,
639	The whole brilliant mass comes spattering down.

112 640	This is my fourteenth year as governor of C province.
641	I was little more than a lad when I first came here.
642	Now I am old but scarcely any wiser.
643	So little are white hair and a wrinkled forehead a sign of wisdom!

113 644	To slowly raise oneself
645	Hand over hand, lifting one’s entire weight;
646	To forget there was a possibility
647	Of some more politic movement. That freedom, courage
648	And pleasant company could exist.
649	That has always been behind you.

114 650	An earlier litigation: wind hard in the tops
651	Of the baggy eucalyptus branches.

115 652	Today I wrote, “The spring is late this year.
653	In the early mornings there is hoarfrost on the water meadows.
654	And on the highway the frozen ruts are papered over with ice.”

116 655

The day was gloves.

117 656	How far from the usual statement
657	About time, ice—the weather itself had gone.

118 658	I mean this. Through the years
659	You have approached an inventory
660	And it is now that tomorrow
661	Is going to be the climax of your casual
662	Statement about yourself, begun
663	So long ago in humility and false quietude.

119 664	The sands are frantic
665	In the hourglass. But there is time
666	To change, to utterly destroy
667	That too-familiar image
668	Lurking in the glass
669	Each morning, at the edge of the mirror.

120 670	The train is still sitting in the station.
671	You only dreamed it was in motion.

121 672	There are a few travelers on Z high road.
673	Behind a shutter, two black eyes are watching them.
674	They belong to the wife of P, the high-school principal.

122 675	The screen door bangs in the wind, one of the hinges is loose.
676	And together we look back at the house.
677	It could use a coat of paint
678	Except that I am too poor to hire a workman.
679	I have all I can do to keep body and soul together
680	And soon, even that relatively simple task may prove to be beyond my powers.

123 681	That was a good joke you played on the other guests.
682	A joke of silence.

124 683	One seizes these moments as they come along, afraid
684	To believe too much in the happiness that might result
685	Or confide too much of one’s love and fear, even in
686	Oneself.

125 687	The spring, though mild, is incredibly wet.
688	I have spent the afternoon blowing soap bubbles
689	And it is with a feeling of delight I realize I am
690	All alone in the skittish darkness.
691	The birch-pods come clattering down on the weed-grown marble pavement.
692	And a curl of smoke stands above the triangular wooden roof.

126 693	Seventeen years in the capital of Foo-Yung province!
694	Surely woman was born for something
695	Besides continual fornication, retarded only by menstrual cramps.

127 696	I had thought of announcing my engagement to you
697	On the day of the first full moon of X month.

128 698	The wind has stopped, but the magnolia blossoms still
699	Fall with a plop onto the dry, spongy earth.
700	The evening air is pestiferous with midges.

129 701	There is only one way of completing the puzzle:
702	By finding a hog-shaped piece that is light green shading to buff at one side.

130 703	It is the beginning of March, a few
704	Russet and yellow wallflowers are blooming in the border
705	Protected by moss-grown, fragmentary masonry.

131 706	One morning you appear at breakfast
707	Dressed, as for a journey, in your worst suit of clothes.
708	And over a pot of coffee, or, more accurately, rusted water
709	Announce your intention of leaving me alone in this cistern-like house.
710	In your own best interests I shall decide not to believe you.

132 711	I think there is a funny sand bar
712	Beyond the old boardwalk
713	Your intrigue makes you understand.

133 714	“At thirty-two I came up to take my examination at the university.
715	The U wax factory, it seemed, wanted a new general manager.
716	I was the sole applicant for the job, but it was refused me.
717	So I have preferred to finish my life
718	In the quietude of this floral retreat.”

134 719

The tiresome old man is telling us his life story.

135 720

Trout are circling under water—

136 721	Masters of eloquence
722	Glisten on the pages of your book
723	Like mountains veiled by water or the sky.

137 724	The “second position”
725	Comes in the seventeenth year
726	Watching the meaningless gyrations of flies above a sill.

138 727	Heads in hands, waterfall of simplicity.
728	The delta of living into everything.

139 729

The pump is busted. I shall have to get it fixed.

140 730	Your knotted hair
731	Around your shoulders
732	A shawl the color of the spectrum

141 733

Like that marvelous thing you haven’t learned yet.

142 734	To refuse the square hive,
735	postpone the highest . . .

143 736	The apples are all getting tinted
737	In the cool light of autumn.

144 738	The constellations are rising
739	In perfect order: Taurus, Leo, Gemini.