JOHN ASHBERY
"The Chateau Hardware"

It was always November there. The farms
Were a kind of precinct; a certain control
Had been exercised. The little birds
Used to collect along the fence.
It was the great “as though,” the how the day went,
The excursions of the police
As I pursued my bodily functions, wanting
Neither fire nor water,
Vibrating to the distant pinch
And turning out the way I am, turning out to greet you.

JOHN ASHBURY

“Strange Cinema”

In sooth, I come here sadly,
not trembling, not against my will,
hoping you will set the record straight.
You can, you know, in a minute
if the wind is right and no felon intervenes.

And we sit and you tell me how crazy I am.
I shall petition the other board members
but am afraid nothing will ever come right.
It has been going on too long for this to happen,
yet it was right to go, to go on as it did,
even if there was a strangeness in the rightness
that no one can see now. They see the night
in its undress, plaits unplaited, brushed,
the sound of the surf churning on distant rocks,
can think only about how heavenly it would have been
if it had all happened later of differently.

Now, according to some sources,
new golfing trends are a commodity,
along with silence, and sweetness.
Doucement, doucement …
And when the sweetness is adjusted,
why, we’ll know more than some do now.
That is all I can offer you,
my lost, my beloved one.

JOHN ASHBERY

"O Fortuna"

____________________

Good luck! Best wishes! The best of luck! 

The very best! Godspeed! God bless you! 

Peace be with you!

May your shadow never be less!

We can see through to the other side,

you see. It’s your problem, we know,

but I can’t help feeling a little envious.

What if darkness became unhinged right now? 

Boomingly, swimmingly one remounts the current. 

Here is where the shade was, the suggestion of flowers, 

and peace, in another place.

Our competition is like tools of a certain order.

No one would have found them useful at first.

It wasn’t until a real emergency arose, that someone 

had the sense to recognize for what it was.

All hell didn’t break loose, it was like a rising psalm 

materializing like snow on an unseen mountain.

All that was underfoot was good, but lost.

PARALLEL MOVEMENT OF THE HANDS

Five Unfinished Longer Works

____________________

John Ashbery

Edited by Emily Skillings

WALLACE SHAWN
____________________

If Dick Cheney had been obsessed by the poetry of John Ashbery, there would be a lot of people alive today who are now dead.

JOHN ASHBURY

“Strange Cinema”

In sooth, I come here sadly,
not trembling, not against my will,
hoping you will set the record straight.
You can, you know, in a minute
if the wind is right and no felon intervenes.

And we sit and you tell me how crazy I am.
I shall petition the other board members
but am afraid nothing will ever come right.
It has been going on too long for this to happen,
yet it was right to go, to go on as it did,
even if there was a strangeness in the rightness
that no one can see now. They see the night
in its undress, plaits unplaited, brushed,
the sound of the surf churning on distant rocks,
can think only about how heavenly it would have been
if it had all happened later of differently.

Now, according to some sources,
new golfing trends are a commodity,
along with silence, and sweetness.
Doucement, doucement …
And when the sweetness is adjusted,
why, we’ll know more than some do now.
That is all I can offer you,
my lost, my beloved one.