- for John Ashbery -
There wasn’t much precedence for any of this.
Until now things were really no more than
they were. You and I for the most part were ourselves.
Then mundanity introduced its greasy thumb,
entered its signature in the ledger.
The past appeared as the likeness of a stranger
past whose redoubled image presented itself
between the sloughing instances of speech
which rustled the fraying edges. And you, of all,
were neither afraid of the sleeping mollusks nor
of those who served a prouder rhetoric,
gathering once more in the place from which we fled.
There are platitudes to which we at times were prone:
“Life is a turtle, the spirit a bone.”
Ah, to be revived by a fancy for the dead.
[Next: After the Giants]
[Previous: Diaspora]