John Ashbery: The Whole Is Admirably Composed

In rainy night all the faces look like telephones.

Help me! I am in this street because I was

going someplace, and now, not to be there is here.

So billows pile up on the shore, I hear

the mountains, the tide of autumn pulls in

ever thicker like a blanket of tears, and

people go about their business, unconcerned

if with another. And to those whose loneliness

shouts envy in my face, I say I am here on this

last floor, room of sobs and of grieving.

It’s better you know to actually live it

since always some unexpected detail intervenes:

how he came to your house long ago

on a forgotten afternoon filled with birds’ wings

and the standard that stood then has crumpled

yet another has taken its place:

high up in the ivy where the water from the

falls disappears amid smooth boulders,

this renown, this envy. And most of all

the challenge sleep brings, how it coaxes

the dunce out of his lair, how meals are shared

and whispers passed around. Then the real boy

comes to you like a kite on wind that is flagging

through the needle hole of the hourglass—

as though this were the summit.

There is more to inconstancy than you will

want to hear, and meanwhile the streets have dried,

tears been put away until another time, and a smile

paints the easy vapor that rises from all

human activity. I see it is time to question trees,

thorns in hedges, again, the same blind investigation

that leads you from trap to trap before bargaining

to forget you. And this is only a bump

on the earth’s surface, casting no shadow, until

the white and dark fruits of the far pledge be

wafted into view again, out of control, shimmering

in the dark that runs off and is collected

in oceans. And the map is again wiped clean.