Free Flow Chart: A Poem by John Ashbery Page A

Just two;
    the alibi would only cover two; it’s over; we are lost
    in the habit, smiling in a foxglove tent; but the doves requested permission to weave over us
    like psalms and sometimes the sun is good, but it just seems like it won’t go away
    the way a song does, leaving a slightly hollowed path behind. We could follow,
    but the brimming lake on the horizon is more likely to join us if we
    don’t absolve ourselves, recklessly dreaming. In time all excuses merge in an arch
    whose keystone overlooks heaven, and
    we must be patient if we are to live that far, at our own expense, this time, without that.
    Bet there was some falling off there; still, amid the hoo-ha concerning new appointments and
    such there was no time to discern; new people there, android sleep rains down
    on pinched neighbors like ingots of silver, and there’s no mess, only a poking among reeds.
    The last recognizable mentor left; it was up to the remains of his flock to reconstitute,
    but left to their own devices many fled the comparative safety of the coop for used-
    car lots, car washes, drive-in banks, in order so to speak to get their heads together.
    I was the only one of my squadron to count them as they left in single file,
    but not being able to do much about it, or keep records, soon I too was lost—well, not exactly,
    but tethered expectations always result when you go a little too far in one direction, not
    enough in another, and betimes one spots the calendar on the office wall: think, it says.
    Like a plangent river my life has unrolled this far, to a fraction of this place,
    and I have commandeered motor launches, but it has all been in vain, this celebration: listen,
    what do children think of you now? Suddenly everyone is younger, and many of them not all
    that young, either, and who, do you suppose, loves you? It’s a variant of the shell game
    again; not all its premises are suicidal, but where is the one who takes out the ashes,
    leaves the key behind? Up through the frantic town he rages (“It works, it’s bent
    but it works!”) like the wing of a plane but we always knew it was here, sure we did, Ma I’ll tell you later
    in the meantime and lilac bushes are a kind of promise. Aren’t they? And wine,
    and noisemakers, and all the little things we thought good at a hinge in space: they’re
    not like that now, are they? And all the kids, and people who came over: now salted
    in their time, and we try to break out of ours, I guess, and still the animals stampede toward
    headquarters. I was depressed when I wrote that. Don’t read it. Still, if you must, take
    note of certain exemptions in the
    fourth paragraph where I was high: they said it shouldn’t enter, but I succeeded in decoding the big top
    so that someday all children should live like this, have what was at last ours,
    only I succeeded and a train roared by: that man , it seems to say. And then it is past,
    after it is flagged down. A sore spot in my memory undoes what I have just written
    as fast as I can write; weave, and it shall be unraveled; talk, and the listener response
    will take your breath away, so it is decreed. And I shall be traveling on
    a little farther to a favorite spot of mine, O you’d like it, but no one can go there. The mummy
    said so. I have to keep in the shadows yet a little longer, until you will wisely see how I
    fit under here and so must leave any day now.
    The boskets were blue, I remember; only
    a few ships in the distance now, and a tall flag beckons
    me in another direction. Dammit, I’ll stick to this one, this is the one they meant
    for me to take all along, and I don’t see why I should take that other one. My child,
    you must do as you wish; to do otherwise would insult God’s rule, and you do
    care for Him, don’t you? Only give no thought to the morrow—
    it will presently arrive and take care of itself, you’ll see. Meanwhile, if a new hat
    might seem appropriate, then why not? Oh father I was looking out the