John Ashbery

America the Lovely

If it’s loveliness you want, here, take some,

hissed the black fairy. Waiting for the string quartet,

on the corner, denatured I wondered what the heck.

I’ll have some too. They call it architecture,

I was told. Anything to sift the discerning

from the mob-capped mob, their stiffened fright wigs

marching against the breeze improbably back

into colonial dreams and days. See that polecat?

He’s yours, if you want it. Only be careful what you ask for,

she warned. Here in hither Tartarus we have names

for jerks like you. Flustered, I released the emergency brake,

turned to warn the approaching others.

This was the real thing:

The flash comes handily, signs of its musing scattered next day

like hoarfrost. The glittering, the of-two-minds

pause to share a winter pear and notes on decomposition

glued to the door of the fridge.

Was it for this we journeyed so far

By prairie schooner from reassuring Pennsylvania?

Believe the nights are bleak now,

though perhaps no more than our earliest attempts

at love poetry in a house across the street.

Pagans do combat with other pagans,

men with two hyphenated names block access

to the embarcadero.

Palinodes charm our hearing

as new strictures emerge in the ruckus, belike, betimes.

Then it too went away.

--John Ashbery

fr. A Worldly Country

[New York: Ecco, 2007]

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