Personal anthology: John Ashbery

By on January 30th, 2004

Night Life

I thought it was you but I couldn’t tell.
It’s so hard, working with people, you want them all
To like you and be happy, but they get in the way
Of their own predilections, it’s like a stone

Blocking the mouth of a cave. And when you say, come on let’s
Be individuals reveling in our separateness, yet twined
Together at the top by our hair, like branches, then it’s OK
To go down into the garden at night and smoke cigarettes,

Except that nothing cares about the obstacles, the gravity
You had to overcome to reach this admittedly unimpressive
Stage in the chain of delusions leading to your freedom,
Or is that just one more delusion? Yet I like the way

Your hair is cropped, it’s important, the husky fragrance
Breaking out of your voice, when I’ve talked too long
On the phone, addressing the traffic from my balcony
Again, launched far out over the thin ice once it begins to smile.

— John Ashbery, from Shadow Train (Penguin, 1981)

Readers of the earlier incarnation of this blog may recall my having posted Ashbery poems before (including one from this same volume, as I recall), but I wanted to post this one even at the risk of being repetitive. I like it when Ashbery writes love poems, and I like the muddled hopefulness in this one — the idea of two people hashing out, over the telephone, how to both "be individuals reveling in our separateness, yet twined / Together at the top by our hair, like branches." One wants something hopeful to read in the middle of winter, after all; and I, like several

others in the blogosphere, have been feeling the effects of prolonged cold and darkness. This poem isn’t exactly springlike, but I’m fond of it nonetheless.

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