Although I mean it, and project the meaning
As hard as I can into its brushed-metal surface,
It cannot, in this deteriorating climate, pick up
Where I leave off. It sees the Japanese text
(About two men making love on a foam-rubber bed)
As among the most massive secretions of the human spirit.
Its part is in the shade, beyond the iron spikes of the fence,
Mixing red with blue. As the day wears on
Those who come to seem reasonable are shouted down
(Why you old goat! Look who’s talkin’. Let’s see you
Climb off that tower—the waterworks architecture, both
stupid and
Grandly humorous at the same time, is a kind of mask
for him,
Like a seal’s face. Time and the weather
Don’t always go hand in hand, as here: sometimes
One is slanted sideways, disappears for awhile.
Then later it’s forget-me-not time, and rapturous
Clouds appear above the lawn, and the rose tells
The old old story, the pearl of the orient, occluded
And still apt to rise at times).
A few black smudges
On the outer boulevards, like squashed midges
And the truth becomes a hole, something one has always
known,
A heaviness in the trees, and no one can say
Where it comes from, or how long it will stay
A randomness, a darkness of one’s own.
The Ice-Cream Wars
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