Free Wakefulness: Poems by John Ashbery Page B

floodplains spotted with children,
    investing everything in everything.
    And I’m too shy to throw away.

PALINDROME OF EVENING
    In other places where it was found
    necessary for there to be buttons, expectations were naturally higher, and higher,
    and higher.
    Here,
    a sow’s purse translates into a silk ear, and communications
    are jammed.
    No one takes hold any more.
    Look, the flower has escaped from its trellis,
    the bear goes down into the lake.
    In my second house rare footage
    of metempsychosis plays endlessly, like a tune
    variously tooted.
    I often feel I’m a buyer,
    but the painted carnival head reasons otherwise,
    badgers me. There is no release in sight,
    in the works, down the pike.
    Horrified spectators jam the football field;
    it was like night and day.
    We can’t go back to the restaurant;
    the roof is snatched away.
    What were expectations back then?
    Do we know how high the astronauts carried us,
    let us fall, bouncing for what seemed an eternity,
    until all was well again?
    I’ve got my cool
    in these pants, keeping it for you.

COUSIN SARAH’S KNITTING
    You keep asking me that four times.
    Why trust me I think.
    There is, in fact, nobody here.
    Nobody in the past.
    Nobody to turn to for advice.
    A yellow flagpole rears thoughtfully.
    Now if you were that nice.
    He was pulled from space,
    as from a shark. After they examined him
    they let him go. What does that prove?
    And called him Old Hickory.
    As in hickory. No there were
    at that time none living
    out of a sideshow at the edge of a forest
    and were mistreated in proportion,
    with understanding, so they all grew
    into the shade and for once it seemed
    about right. Oh, call down to me.
    It seemed about right.
    Then there was something of a letdown.
    Patrol boats converged
    but it was decided that the…
    and could continue its voyage
    upriver
    to the point where it tails off
    and then there was a large misunderstanding.
    It was misunderstanding, mudsliding
    from the side where the thing was let in.
    And it was all goose, let me tell you,
    braised goose. From which a longing in the original
    loins came forward to mark you.
    So many brave skippers,
    such a long time at sea. But I was going
    to remind you of this new story
    I can’t remember, of the two chums meeting in the overfed waste land and it supported them. And one got
    off at the front. The other wandered for days and daze, and by the time nobody remembered it it was summer again
    and wandered around defensively. Sure the organ meat
    was pumping and somebody’s boy came up to the correct
    thing at the well head. Sure as you can claim Dixie your tax accountant
    wandered over the remaining riviera, all to be blue again. And the rascals…
    and I was going to say keep it. You can keep it.
    Granted she has no reputation, an eye
    here, another clovered savior here, they pretend to us, and it was time for the firemobile too.

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I WAS IN BUCHAREST
    seeking to convince the supreme Jester
    that I am indeed the man in those commercials.
    Simultaneously it peaked in Bolivia, the moon,
    I mean. Then we were walking over what seemed to be
    heather, or was called that. The downtown riot
    of free speech occurred. Plastered to its muzzle,
    Randy the dog’s decoding apparatus went astray.
    By then it was afternoon in much of the world;
    iced tea was served on vast terraces
    overlooking a crumbling sea. You can’t juggle
    four toddlers. Three is enough. Out of the beckoning
    sea they arrived, in white ruffles with black coin-dots
    attached; the lawn was closer to a farm
    this time; it mouthed “Farm.” Will vacuumed the whole of space
    as far as the mind-your-own-business wire stretched, that is,
    from Cadiz to Enterprise, Alaska. We thought we had seen a few new
    adjectives, but nobody was too sure. They might have been
    gerunds, or bunches of breakfast…

ADDED POIGNANCY
    What could I tell you? I couldn’t tell you any other way.
    We, meanwhile, have witnessed changes, and now