POEMS
JOHN ASHBERY
Bromeliads
In my original philosophy for the age of gink
it felt like a harp was being plucked.
How not to respond to those suggestions, if that's what they are,
like little breezes lifting grass and leaves,
as a delta of mattering fans out from
a point like a minimal encounter.
That's how I faced up and got far away
from the lucky island and arrived at this place of crossings
where no two things occupy the same outline
in both space and time. It's as if the people
who brought you up were to abandon you in your best interests
so as to bring on a crisis of enlightenment -
and then jump up from behind furniture and out of closets
screaming, "Surprise! Surprise!" But it's not clear
just who ages in the process. I look ever closer
into the mirror, into the poured grain of its surface, until another I
seems to have turned brusquely to face me, ready
to reply at last to those questions put long ago ...
Will we achieve anything? Not likely.
But as starlings appear in patterns and in pairs, it
seems that
does
mean something and you shouldn't stay
in your cave until this century is forgotten.
Who'd pay the photographer then?
Did I tell you your prints are ready,
that you look as reckless as an enchanter emeritus
and weary as the first gables of spring?
