John Ashbery: A Stifled Notation

No one ever oversleeps
until the time you are to improve your life, and then
what's one superstition more or less?
The lives, I guess. And it's best to be early
about things, not drink too much,
lest the pattern be seen in its undoing.
The judges march backward up the steps.

Well, you've solved this week's problem,
but the wind is wailing a little too enthusiastically
as the garden takes up the fugue at a point
where it's impossible to be lonesome and valid anymore.
The fishes swim, birds plod fustily
with heaven-dividing cries, until the whole world seems soaked
in the boredom of that sorrow you were promised,
but also
crazy with love and self-deception. Sometimes a charcoal sketch
of a refrigerator is supposed to be the edge.
How long you had no aim
for no other stream.