Capital O

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2004 by Ashbery, John

Sweet food, I lap you up

as from a vessel of kindness.

We "unpack" paradigms of

unstructured mess. Leave us alone this day.

I'd like to write you about all this.

Similarly, I'd like not to have to write

about all the things we are

and never could be: the hereafter of things.

Or so it seemed, walking the plank

of every good thing

toward the tank of carnivorous eels

singing, chiming as we go

into subtracted Totentanz.

That is to say, behind

every good son

there is a watchful father.

Needless to tell, snow coughed up scenery.

There was a stop on the scenic railway

called Edelweiss, and as we got nearer

my heart began to sing lighter,

I was approached by foreign agents

masquerading as talent scouts

and lo, everything dissolved became grand;

there were blind lanterns in the sedge

and the shimmy was named dance of the year.

Soon, the deadline had been passed,

meaning new lime-green shoots in the distance

and banqueting on the firing range

where all reaction is overdue

and the stars shudder and turn silver,

then pink in the difficult light.

Then it's tomorrow and breakfast,

with unanswered letters galore, and this page,

this furtive one, tucked out of an envelope

please, let there be more commotion,

less avian flu. I mean, even cats

are aware, even as they prowl, which is much the same

while you and I pierced the lotus

and the old stereopticon came apart

in my hands, reward for sub rosa being.