John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

8

the importance of        alabaster beetles

E

	(And Helga, in the minuscule apartment in Jersey City
	Is wearing the same kind of violet dress, the color of death
	Promulgated to the rank of blossoms, is drawing breath again
	Against the dark fires of the city, fear and its implements
	Pursuing, once and for all, all chance of rest. And would enter
	The quiet years, a transparent block set down in the middle of life
	As in a suburb. But alas, life is carelessness.
	And the violet, colorless depths of that cube but repeated
	As though by accident, in fringes here and there,
	On some sudden ledge. Or in the faded backs of a musical album
	On the piano rack, raft of the winds

	And Helga, in the miserable apartment in Jersey City
	Is reacting violet to the same kind of dress, is drawing death
	Again in blossoms against the reactionary fire.. pulsing
	and knowing nothing to superb violet distances that intercalate
	This city. Is the death of the cube repeated. Or in the musical album.

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

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

	And this, thus, is a portion of the subject of this poems
	Which takes the form of a snow storm XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX is in the form of falling snow
	That is, that the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the whole's becoming so much of a truism
	That their importance is again put i XXXXXX called in question, to be denied further out, and again and again like this.
	Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,
	Or the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is what it is
	But the rhythm of the series of the repeated jumps, from abstract into positive and back into a slightly less diluted abstract.

Mild effects are the result.

	I cannot think any more of going out into all that, will stay here
	With my mild schmerzen. Besides the storm is almost over.
	Having frozen the face of the bust into a strange style with the lips
	An the teeth the most distinct part of the whole mess.

It is this madness to explain...