- four meditations
on a technique adapted
from John Ashbery -
I.
I thought about certain thoughts that kept coming ‘round,
up to the horizon in succession,
making their hopeful stand upon a rising mound.
Up, way up to that crested bluff in succession!
Do you suppose they wait for our applause
and, later, lament each unheralded session?
Hoping to increase their attendance on applause,
I had the critters of my mind take note
and, when it warranted, bring together their paws.
At last those cranial critters have taken note.
They give each other now, that is, their due.
See how I’ve trained them to it in a sort of rote.
Now that they’re giving themselves their respective due,
I notice those thoughts that keep coming ‘round.
It’s like an approximation of false and true.
II.
I thought about all these thoughts that keep coming ‘round,
up to this trading block in succession,
stacking up, pile on pile, to a glittering mound,
each trading away to the next in succession.
It was as if they would need no applause,
preferring, to congratulation, its cession.
Thinking what pleasures might hold in lieu of applause,
I summoned my auditors to take note
of any gaps in the proceedings, any pause
in the audition that might seem worthy of note,
or castoffs lazing in cognition’s dew.
The record of this audition is what I wrote,
and these lines, the lines that were cast into that dew.
Ponder the wily fishes churning ‘round.
The spawn is imagined, but their colors are true.
III.
I contemplate the wily fishes churning ‘round,
circling this holding pond in succession,
gathering at feeding time in a lively mound.
Is it coronation? Regicide? Secession?
It almost looks as if, failing a plaus-
ible intervention in their scaly session,
the proceedings have been adjourned to much applause,
and clamor made the harmony of note.
If the din cedes not to consonance, then a pause
must allow these clamoring harmonists to note
the lack of fishy sense in what they do,
and that what they do, they do, as they’ve done, by rote,
lacking that which resembles sense in what they do.
Ah, to think how, solely by turning ‘round,
thought cedes through thought to thought, yielding fish in the true!
IV.
Yet finality must obtain in what comes ‘round,
either all at once or through succession.
All things, upon revival, expire on that mound,
death and surcease undying in rapt succession,
and neither of them waiting our applause.
The whole thing is an effect of constant cession.
Whether it’s thus condoned by celestial applause,
or else attunes to an infernal note,
it boots us little on such mysteries to pause.
The silence of mere sound is the ultimate note;
forgetting, the sole sense that we are due.
Yes, oblivion is what comes of so much rote.
Not much, you’ll say, to live on in the A.M. dew.
Yet once more new conceits come turning ‘round,
pertaining to success on the wheel of the true!
August 14 – 16, 2004
Pottstown, PA
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