Read Online Flow Chart: A Poem by John Ashbery - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Ashbery
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included. Round shrubs duly unwrapped
after winter and how do you get hold of these? Sipping a glass of brandy
my mother high above the city shooed
inset chimes to their places; how far
and how many balloons see the light of morning each time this year
and one must have a peg to hang it on, and something to walk upon,
yet it got no worse,
the time between the horse’s lazily but abruptly twitched tail to
the flies from off the stable:
fellows who hurry by you,
they are taking you, out of the catalog, to
obnoxious rendezvous. Meetings. Was it ever a catbird that called thus,
got us late after school, how much we were loving it, instant
in each other’s arms, and one thin one called down, that was a wave of air
to take the place away. And you and I, in our sun-kit,
we must have mastered many foreign dances,
been seen tall at the fair, for one or more of them to recognize us outside
the precinct, and to have got off scot-free for a wad
of cloth, roll of hair brushed from the comb, that’s
all we were meant to see. But in the dark you see more,
especially if you’re a child, and know instinctively what goes on there,
how matchbooks are bent open backwards, what warts they all
came to learn, in thin haze
out over San Francisco. I said you are my teacher Herr Schmidt,
I am the toad and pupil, you are after all all
you set out to be and it’s true isn’t it? It’s come true, look? And his puppy-eyes
appraised mine, I was won over instantly, from that day
never thought forward, looked backward, rain
or shine, from that anointed moment
I first kissed a king in you. What reflections!
We are lucky to have this
yet one doesn’t want to go, makes
excuses not to, toe twisting in door-jamb.
You flattered me I was higher up on the ladder
than any of the other pupils, and when I came to be eight, straight
as two twigs in the barn after love,
the waters receded and left.
Now’s the time. But my fatal shyness overcame me
once again. I hurried out, threw
myself down the street. You see I wasn’t going to be a good boy.
They just came. Took me. Now I angle pleasantly
toward the surface, thinking a good, fat dream: oh to be stuck
in there again. But the fire-engine
won’t let me, the banging hurtling toward a concussion
on rocks, a broken pedestal and here,
here we stand, the breeze is pleasant so let’s take
our time and sing one more song, eyes rolling,
and roam at will, timeless:
indeed I have no doubt it can be so.
Oh I don’t know, do you?
What is it makes the window-maker go off on his own, if not
this sacred season of lips,
gray moisture that squeezes down on us so hard. And we are never
on our own. Because someone decreed we were not to be. And in glacial
pockets of this repercussion were still not meant to be ourselves, until
some cruel stranger forces us to be, and leaves. Ah, but then, what new
problems, taxis, taking years to get an accounting, while daffodils, long dead, continue
to droop sideways. Meanwhile the same film strip
is projected endlessly across one’s forehead. One has seen it so many times!
Yet one dares to admit there are details, each time, that escaped one before,
like the title on the spine of the book laying on the table: The Taming of the Shrew. Once
mastered all this can still instruct far into the pale vacuum
one wants so much to come to know. It is strangely familiar, like a woodcutter
eating bread dans un bois solitaire: O my friends and sisters, haven’t you
ever taken the position that what knows, grows? And familiar noodles are served.
One wants, not to like, but to live in, the structure of things, and this is
the first great mistake, from which all the others, down to the tiniest
speck, bead of snot on a child’s nose, proceed in brisk military fashion, encouraging
to some on a chilly afternoon in March. What they have to say about you never recurs;
the fräulein, in the nadir of a pause, takes up some other subject. It’s
after winter and how do you get hold of these? Sipping a glass of brandy
my mother high above the city shooed
inset chimes to their places; how far
and how many balloons see the light of morning each time this year
and one must have a peg to hang it on, and something to walk upon,
yet it got no worse,
the time between the horse’s lazily but abruptly twitched tail to
the flies from off the stable:
fellows who hurry by you,
they are taking you, out of the catalog, to
obnoxious rendezvous. Meetings. Was it ever a catbird that called thus,
got us late after school, how much we were loving it, instant
in each other’s arms, and one thin one called down, that was a wave of air
to take the place away. And you and I, in our sun-kit,
we must have mastered many foreign dances,
been seen tall at the fair, for one or more of them to recognize us outside
the precinct, and to have got off scot-free for a wad
of cloth, roll of hair brushed from the comb, that’s
all we were meant to see. But in the dark you see more,
especially if you’re a child, and know instinctively what goes on there,
how matchbooks are bent open backwards, what warts they all
came to learn, in thin haze
out over San Francisco. I said you are my teacher Herr Schmidt,
I am the toad and pupil, you are after all all
you set out to be and it’s true isn’t it? It’s come true, look? And his puppy-eyes
appraised mine, I was won over instantly, from that day
never thought forward, looked backward, rain
or shine, from that anointed moment
I first kissed a king in you. What reflections!
We are lucky to have this
yet one doesn’t want to go, makes
excuses not to, toe twisting in door-jamb.
You flattered me I was higher up on the ladder
than any of the other pupils, and when I came to be eight, straight
as two twigs in the barn after love,
the waters receded and left.
Now’s the time. But my fatal shyness overcame me
once again. I hurried out, threw
myself down the street. You see I wasn’t going to be a good boy.
They just came. Took me. Now I angle pleasantly
toward the surface, thinking a good, fat dream: oh to be stuck
in there again. But the fire-engine
won’t let me, the banging hurtling toward a concussion
on rocks, a broken pedestal and here,
here we stand, the breeze is pleasant so let’s take
our time and sing one more song, eyes rolling,
and roam at will, timeless:
indeed I have no doubt it can be so.
Oh I don’t know, do you?
What is it makes the window-maker go off on his own, if not
this sacred season of lips,
gray moisture that squeezes down on us so hard. And we are never
on our own. Because someone decreed we were not to be. And in glacial
pockets of this repercussion were still not meant to be ourselves, until
some cruel stranger forces us to be, and leaves. Ah, but then, what new
problems, taxis, taking years to get an accounting, while daffodils, long dead, continue
to droop sideways. Meanwhile the same film strip
is projected endlessly across one’s forehead. One has seen it so many times!
Yet one dares to admit there are details, each time, that escaped one before,
like the title on the spine of the book laying on the table: The Taming of the Shrew. Once
mastered all this can still instruct far into the pale vacuum
one wants so much to come to know. It is strangely familiar, like a woodcutter
eating bread dans un bois solitaire: O my friends and sisters, haven’t you
ever taken the position that what knows, grows? And familiar noodles are served.
One wants, not to like, but to live in, the structure of things, and this is
the first great mistake, from which all the others, down to the tiniest
speck, bead of snot on a child’s nose, proceed in brisk military fashion, encouraging
to some on a chilly afternoon in March. What they have to say about you never recurs;
the fräulein, in the nadir of a pause, takes up some other subject. It’s
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