Free Some Trees: Poems by John Ashbery Page B

had
    In the empty day. People and sticks go down to the water.
    How can we be so silent? Only shivers
    Are bred in this land of whistling goats.
    Colin: Father, I have long dreamed your whitened
    Face and sides to accost me in dull play.
    If you in your bush indeed know her
    Where shall my heart’s vagrant tides place her?
    Cuddie: A wish is induced by a sudden change
    In the wind’s decay. Shall we to the water’s edge,
    O prince? The peons rant in a light fume.
    Madness will gaze at its reflection.
    Colin: What is this pain come near me?
    Now I thought my heart would burst,
    And there, spiked like some cadenza’s head,
    A tiny crippled heart was born.
    Cuddie: I tell you good will imitate this.
    Now we must dip in raw water
    These few thoughts and fleshy members.
    So evil may refresh our days.
    Colin: She has descended part way!
    Now father cut me down with tears.
    Plant me far in my mother’s image
    To do cold work of books and stones.
    Cuddie : I need not raise my hand
    Colin : She burns the flying peoples
    Cuddie : To hear its old advice
    Colin : And spears my heart’s two beasts
    Cuddie : Or cover with its mauves.
    Colin : And I depart unhurt.

The Instruction Manual
    As I sit looking out of a window of the building
    I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
    I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
    And envy them—they are so far away from me!
    Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
    And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,
    Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
    City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!
    But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,
    Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!
    The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.
    Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose-and lemon-colored flowers,
    Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),
    And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.
    The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.
    First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow
    Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat
    And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.
    His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.
    Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,
    And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.
    But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one
    I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.
    Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk
    Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.
    He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.
    But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.
    Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,
    And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.
    But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.
    Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,
    Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl
    Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying
    But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.
    She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.
    She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.
    Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;
    His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,
    I see there is an intermission in the concert.
    The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws
    (The drinks are