Where Shall I Wander

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

Shifting, too anxious to be fully aware, the screen of dirt and glitter grazes the edge of the pavement. It is understood that this is now the past, sixty, sixty-four years ago. It matters precisely at the drip of blood forming at the end of an icicle that hisses at you, you're a pod of a man. You know, forget and dislike him.

The row of dishes stretched into the distance, dreaming. Is it Japan where you are? Who are these slate prisons, aligned, half bowing offstage, half erupting out of the prompter's box? Glycerin stains the cheeks

and the old fire tongs have their say. This is a story in a chest. Conversations at night not meant to be overheard, so you can't tell exactly when you came in, at which second. The interior is meant to be homey upstairs, downstairs, all across the hall, dazzled from the blue microsecond it took to get here, but if then, why? Why the commotion on the shore? Traces of birds in the sand, birdshit, claw marks. And the rest are missing.

Soon bread will announce itself. To be seen from behind, here is what you have to do. Smear a tongue depressor with a little suet, then stand away, pessimistic as always. The part in your hair will come to seem the natural one. Your faded red t-shirt is indeed ours to look at. Except there are too many middle-aged rubes now. You know, you've got to go out, jostle the barometer, bump into the hall tree and excuse yourself, descend three steps, walk to the curb and pee against someone's sedan. Then it may turn out that you have seen your back. A joyful roar lit up the headlands, from afar

screeching white as the World's Columbian Exposition, inspiration to architects of the burgeoning Twentieth Century, swarming now, too hungry to appease, let's get on with it. But you have to do it more often. To qualify for some ofthat relief aid. Kings in their dungeons applaud the new centennial, McKinley assassinated. Lake Erie broods, pushes its lower lip out. OK, if you can get all you want through mismanagement, this late-breaking trust buster can do the same, providing you all shape up. Mansions and factories line Dakota Boulevard. Skyboards, and the dark rhythms of houses, shuttered, forever, what concept is that? In the end the jazz reaches will effort it out. Darn it,

I like your lingo. We two be here all the same. The Russian sparrows wheel pesteringly, no it is not time to come in, I said no it is not a time to come in. Fine we'll stay out where it's mild,

contingency is all the rage here. I said ... No but there comes a time when contingency itself is contingent on the abrupt desire to happen, a colossal burp brewing somewhere. And moreover what I maintained to you once stands, signpost in the desert pointing the wrong way, we'll get back whatever way we can, sure as heck. Then you just came around the barn's edge as though materializing, it wouldn't have taken much. So why didn't I... didn't we ... It's past time, half past time, too late but another time, so long, so long for a while, geez I don't know, the answer, if I did, you-and if I did ...

Effably, it talks on, not paring it, scrambled then restructured, a song to remember in reckless sleep, bygones. She used to say, "as Amy would say, as Leon would say," and let this stand as a portal cut into the granite face, from which one could view shards within, boulders tormented as though by torrents, but still, as though motion had never dreamed of sleep. Then to stand up and stretch, the day draining. Scratch any itch, the somber legato underneath will surge prominently, lean on the right lever. Absence

relieves itself, got to be getting on with those notes. Let's see . . . Wherever a tisket is available, substitute an item from column B, then return to the starting goal. The challenger barely had time to mouth our initials, the glaze was off the cake, whoa, before there were few but now they are all of a piece, snoring to drown the freesia's reticence. Charles is gone. He used to live here, when blood erupted into riots and the frugal demurrers retreated all of a sudden. We like to use to be here, scrubbing soap stone, celebrating rags in my head to make the antlers glow. Use medium strength bleach until pursued clobbered effect pulsates in little burrs, grace-notes in an awful cataract, groans we anticipated, revelers' premature hooha. Grouchy he acceded, a jobber's whisk

parses the banished interval. But why talk of housebreaking on a night like this? To one viewer, off in different directions with elaborate casualness, to regroup behind Rusty's garage, concocting who knows what deviltry, having conveniently evaporated from the hoary scribe's all-consuming minutes. And if you were to tape the remous famously issuing from the ensuing gaggle-would you do it differently? For time, and this is where it gets really nasty, remembers all of us, recognizes us making allowances for our changed appearance and greets us familiarly by name, only occasionally getting mixed up (though it does happen). So who's to blame us for signing off on our agenda and sinking into a cozy chair, accepting the proffered sherry and sighing for a time when things really were easier and more people were alive. That, and Jack's tattoo. But there was something else slinking up via the back way and mingling with the invited guests, mine de rien. Not a bailiff or a rejected suitor from prelapsarian school picnics, nor yet a seemingly indifferent observer, tie-clasp camera getting it all down, nor a truly openminded member of the cultivated bourgeoisie our grandfathers sprang from or knew about, but a cosmic dunce, bent on mischief and good works with equal zest, somebody fully determined to be and not disturb others with his passive-aggressive version of how things are and ever shall be-the distinguished visiting lecturer.