Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE TENNIS COURT OATH
What had you been thinking about the face studiously bloodied heaven blotted region I go on loving you like water but there is a terrible breath in the way all of this You were not elected president, yet won the race All the way through fog and drizzle When you read it was sincere the coasts stammered with unintentional villages the horse strains fatigued I guess ... the calls ...
I worry
the water beetle head why of course reflecting all then you redid you were breathing I thought going down to mail this of the kettle you jabbered as easily in the yard you come through but are incomparable the lovely tent mystery you don't want surrounded the real you dance in the spring there was clouds
The mulatress approached in the hall — the lettering easily visible along the edge of the Times
in a moment the bell would ring but there was time for the carnation laughed here are a couple of "other"
to one in yon house
The doctor and Philip had come over the road Turning in toward the corner of the wall his hat on reading it carelessly as if to tell you your fears were justified the blood shifted you know those walls wind off the earth had made him shrink undeniably an oboe now the young were there there was candy to decide the sharp edge of the garment like a particular cry not intervening called the dog "he's coming! he's
coming" with an emotion felt it sink into peace there was no turning back but the end was in sight he chose this moment to ask her in detail about her family and the others The person. pleaded —"have more of these not stripes on the tunic — or the porch chairs will teach you about men — what it means"
to be one in a million pink stripe and now could go away the three approached the doghouse the reef. Your daughter's dream of my son understand prejudice darkness in the hole the patient finished They could all go home now the hole was dark lilacs blowing across his face glad he brought you
"THEY DREAM ONLY OF AMERICA"
They dream only of America To be lost among the thirteen million pillars of grass:
"This honey is delicious
Though it burns the throat."
And hiding from darkness in barns They can be grownups now And the murderer's ash tray is more easily —
The lake a lilac cube.
He holds a key in his right hand.
"Please," he asked willingly.
He is thirty years old.
That was before
We could drive hundreds of miles At night through dandelions.
When his headache grew worse we Stopped at a wire filling station.
Now he cared only about signs.
Was the cigar a sign?
And what about the key?
He went slowly into the bedroom.
"I would not have broken my leg if I had not fallen Against the living room table. What is it to be back Beside the bed? There is nothing to do For our liberation, except wait in the horror of it.
And I am lost without you."
THOUGHTS OF A YOUNG GIRL
"It is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter From the tower, and to show I'm not mad:
I only slipped on the cake of soap of the air And drowned in the bathtub of the world.
You were too good to cry much over me.
And now I let you go. Signed, The Dwarf."
I passed by late in the afternoon And the smile still played about her lips As it has for centuries. She always knows How to be utterly delightful. Oh my daughter,
My sweetheart, daughter of my late employer, princess,
May you not be long on the way!
AMERICA
1.
Piling upward the fact the stars In America the office hid archives in his stall ...
Enormous stars on them The cold anarchist standing in his hat.
Arm along the rail We were parked Millions of us The accident was terrible.
The way the door swept out The stones piled up —
The ribbon — books. Miracle. with moon and the stars
The pear tree moving me I am around and in my sigh The gift of a the stars.
The person Horror — the morsels of his choice Rebuked to me I
— in the apartment the pebble we in the bed.
The roof —
rain — pills —
Found among the moss Hers wouldn't longer care — I don't know why.
2.
Ribbons over the Pacific Sometimes we The deep additional and more and more less deep but hurting under the fire brilliant rain to meet us.
Probably in moulded fire We make it times of the year the light falls from heaven love parting the separate lives her fork the specs notably fire.
We get unhappy, off The love All the house Waste visits Autumn brushes the hair The girl has lived in this corner In the sunlight all year.
getting up to speak Your janitor tried if it was ready I was almost killed now by reading on trial standing with the jar in the door wrapper of this year fire intangible Spoon glad the dirt around the geraniums of last August's dried in the yard played for certain person of course the lathes around the stars with privilege jerks over the country last year we were disgusted meeting misguided their only answer pine tree off of the land to the wind out of your medicine health, light, death preoccupation, beauty.
So don't kill the stone this is desert to the arms You girl the sea in waves.
3.
of the arsenal shaded in public a hand put up lips — a house A minute the music stops.
The day it began. Person blocking the conductor Is the janitor with the red cape And the pot of flowers in one hand His face hidden by the shelf thought intangible.
So is this way out into the paths of the square petals armed with a chain arctic night what with stars rocks and that fascinating illumination that buries my heart itself a tribune for which dancers come. Inch pageant of history shaping More than the forms can do quacks the night over the baths stirred in his sleep the janitor reaches for the wrench
with which he'll kill the intruder Terrain Glistening Doesn't resemble much the out of doors We walked around the hand observe the smashing of the rain into the door the night can't keep inside perhaps feeling the sentry the perfect disc We walked toward the bush the disc something was the matter with the disc bush had forgotten apples on the crater the northern Messenger the snow stone
4.
Though I had never come here This country, its laws of glass And night majesty Through the football Lured far away Wave helplessly The country lined with snow only mush was served piling up the undesired stars needed against the night Forbidden categorically but admitted beyond the cape the tree still grows tears fall And I am proud of these stars in our flag we don't want the flag of film waving over the sky toward us — citizens of some future state.
We despair in the room, but the stars And night persist, knowing we don't want it Some tassels first then nothing — day the odor.
In the hall. The stone.
5
Across the other sea, was in progress the halt sea Tens of persons blinded Immediately the port, challenge Argument Pear tree Only perforation Chain to fall apart in his hand Someday liberty to be of the press drank perhaps the lotion she added. Drank the orders.
The fake ones.
border his misanthropy. pear mist.
the act imitation his happy stance position peace on earth ignited fluid before he falls must come under this head be liked, so may be Tears, hopeless adoration, passions the fruit of carpentered night Visible late next day. Cars blockade the streets wish the geraniums embracing umbrella falling his embrace he strangles in his storage but in this meant one instance A feather not snow blew against the window.
A signal from the great outside.
TWO SONNETS
1. DIDO
The body's products become Fatal to it. Our spit Would kill us, but we Die of our heat.
Though I say the things I wish to say They are needless, their own flame conceives it.
So I am cheated of perfection.
The iodine bottle sat in the hall And out over the park where crawled roadsters The apricot and purple clouds were And our blood flowed down the grating Of the cream-colored embassy.
Inside it they had a record of "The St. Louis Blues."
2. THE IDIOT
O how this sullen, careless world Ignorant of me is! Those rocks, those homes Know not the touch of my flesh, nor is there one tree Whose shade has known me for a friend.
I've wandered the wide world over.
No man I've known, no friendly beast Has come and put its nose into my hands.
No maid has welcomed my face with a kiss.
Yet once, as I took passage From Gibraltar to Cape Horn I met some friendly mariners on the boat And as we struggled to keep the ship from sinking The very waves seemed friendly, and the sound The spray made as it hit the front of the boat.
TO REDOUTÉ
To true roses uplifted on the bilious tide of evening And morning-glories dotting the crescent day The oval shape responds:
My first is a haunting face In the hanging-down hair.
My second is water:
I am a sieve.
My only new thing:
The penalty of light forever Over the heads of those who were there And back into the night, the cough of the finishing petal.
Once approved the magenta must continue But the bark island sees Into the light:
It grieves for what it gives:
Tears that streak the dusty firmament.
NIGHT
The evening I offer you the easy aspirin of death Boots on the golden age of landscape You don't understand when I've Smelled the smell of ... I don't know Now from opposite sides of the drawing The nut of his birthday
Bringing night brings in also idea of death Thought when she was sixteen ... he'd take her out But it did no good ... Fuss was Over the comics like in board you seen Growing in patch on them laurels. And after Taken out behind the stairs and stood them In the kitchen ... the flowers blowing in the window Felt funny just the same ... on account of the stove We moved to another place. Funny how eighteen years can make All that difference ... the marble We never wanted to go away But the porch forced its way on Acting kind of contented in the silvery wind From who knows where ... the porcelain Uh huh.
It was sometime after this We were all sitting alone one night One stops did you hear the colored flute Brand of years tossed into ash can The heap of detritus .. tickets to the bed Detective women the entire scene We'll make sides.
They stop for a moment.
His landlord turned him out It a hot dog stand
................
Was grown chilly My brain concocted It did the inspector He had been wandering Around the park in a delirium After the fang had grown Add dishes returned — flowers on them Neutral daylight sitting things Like it. It woofed. It liked it.
Ordeal a home and My lake and sat down We must the gin came faster in cups Under the scissors mill just like you was sixteen In the orange flowers a pale narcissus hung You was saying the alligators the grove And he plied a rod out of the gray Fishing manure ... the gray roses the best And the bed hung with violets I was rampant to ask you she had been would circulate The prisons ...
Out of the storeroom never to Back in the room they for the six weeks Piercing the monocle ... because letters The sad trash newspapers schedule complaint To belong to me ...........................
It strikes me ... the robe loose The overalls laying ...
Gray and ... flimsy. You the cake Hobbled over to get the and grand Store out of peanuts dust his thin Cane down near store and the powder Under the runway where a little Light falls just on the patch Noise that thought came from his own leg There are numerous Distinct flavors The peanut ship wells Into the desert The stand ... Velocipede Pergolas next to the chance of numb hitting In the rostrum he forgot the behind him Murmur halls on half-wet beauty Paper green big Sense Where the trout had originated from Smuggled from youth and grown into a tree Fallen halfway across house To bring the pet Over the flowered curtains around Water capillaries magic Lift on the dune ... screaming her part dumb
They vary, depending Salmon left the sea, gradually to Pale and watery But he will never to the fly It is dumb and night continually seeping up — like a reservoir Of truth on the bandits He asked the fish why she seemed to ...
A jeweler's, smooth, and luggage Next day beside the rail Arranged for night the postman bent down Delivered his stare into the grass I guess the darkness stubbed its toe
We were growing away from that ... waiting The pool of shade Near the dress house .. and she turned in The fly beckon on the window The kids came and we all went the briars.
"HOW MUCH LONGER WILL I BE ABLE TO INHABIT THE DIVINE SEPULCHER ..."
How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher Of life, my great love? Do dolphins plunge bottomward To find the light? Or is it rock That is searched? Unrelentingly? Huh. And if some day
Men with orange shovels come to break open the rock Which encases me, what about the light that comes in then?
What about the smell of the light?
What about the moss?
In pilgrim times he wounded me Since then I only lie My bed of light is a furnace choking me With hell (and sometimes I hear salt water dripping).
I mean it — because I'm one of the few To have held my breath under the house. I'll trade One red sucker for two blue ones. I'm Named Tom. The
Light bounces off mossy rocks down to me In this glen (the neat villa! which When he'd had he would not had he of And jests under the smarting of privet
Which on hot spring nights perfumes the empty rooms With the smell of sperm flushed down toilets On hot summer afternoons within sight of the sea.
If you knew why then professor) reads
To his friends: Drink to me only with And the reader is carried away By a great shadow under the sea.
Behind the steering wheel
The boy took out his own forehead.
His girlfriend's head was a green bag Of narcissus stems. "OK you win But meet me anyway at Cohen's Drug Store In 22 minutes." What a marvel is ancient man!
Under the tulip roots he has figured out a way to be a religious animal And would be a mathematician. But where in unsuitable heaven Can he get the heat that will make him grow?
For he needs something or will forever remain a dwarf,
Though a perfect one, and possessing a normal-sized brain But he has got to be released by giants from things.
And as the plant grows older it realizes it will never be a tree,
Will probably always be haunted by a bee And cultivates stupid impressions So as not to become part of the dirt. The dirt Is mounting like a sea. And we say goodbye
Shaking hands in front of the crashing of the waves That give our words lonesomeness, and make these flabby hands seem
ours —
Hands that are always writing things On mirrors for people to see later —
Do you want them to water Plant, tear listlessly among the exchangeable ivy —
Carrying food to mouth, touching genitals —
But no doubt you have understood
It all now and I am a fool. It remains For me to get better, and to understand you so Like a chair-sized man. Boots Were heard on the floor above. In the garden the sunlight was still purple
But what buzzed in it had changed slightly But not forever ... but casting its shadow On sticks, and looking around for an opening in the air, was quite as if it
had never refused to exist differently. Guys In the yard handled the belt he had made
Stars Painted the garage roof crimson and black He is not a man Who can read these signs ... his bones were stays ...
And even refused to live In a world and refunded the hiss Of all that exists terribly near us Like you, my love, and light.
For what is obedience but the air around us To the house? For which the federal men came In a minute after the sidewalk Had taken you home? ("Latin ... blossom ...")
After which you led me to water And bade me drink, which I did, owing to your kindness.
You would not let me out for two days and three nights,
Bringing me books bound in wild thyme and scented wild grasses
As if reading had any interest for me, you ...
Now you are laughing.
Darkness interrupts my story.
Turn on the light.
Meanwhile what am I going to do?
I am growing up again, in school, the crisis will be very soon.
And you twist the darkness in your fingers, you Who are slightly older ...
Who are you, anyway?
And it is the color of sand,
The darkness, as it sifts through your hand Because what does anything mean,
The ivy and the sand? That boat Pulled up on the shore? Am I wonder,
Strategically, and in the light Of the long sepulcher that hid death and hides me?
RAIN
I.
The spoon of your head
crossed by livid stems The chestnuts' large clovers wiped
You see only the white page its faint frame of red
You hear the viola's death sound
A woman sits in black and white tile
Why, you are pale
Light sucks up what I did In the room two months ago Spray of darkness across the back,
Tree flowers ...
Taxis took us far apart And will ...
over the shuddering page of a sea
The sofa Hay blown in the window The boards dark as night sea Pot of flowers fixed in the wind
Last year ... the gray snow falling
The building ... pictures
His eye into the forest
And people alright
Those stiff lead rods
Silver in the afternoon light
Near where it stops
Where they drink tea from a glass smaller than a thimble
Head of shade
And many stiff little weeds that grew beside the kidney-shaped lake A wooden cage painted green
sand
And the green streets though parallel run
far from each other Cupped under the small lead surface of that cloud you see you are going to die Burnt by the powder of that view
The day of the week will not save you Mixture of air and wind Sand then mud A flower, lost in someone's back yard.
II.
The first coffee of the morning
Soon the stars.
and broken feldspar black
squares against the light
message — a handwriting
Dip pen in solution
They would be playing now
The sky
Flowers sucked in — stone rhinunculus
amaryllis — red
Freesia and existence The letter arrives — seeing the stamp
The van
New York under the umbrella
A photograph of what
Fumes
Features in the lake
The light
The shadow of a hand
soft on the lock
staring wax
scraped with a pin, reflection of the face
The time
principal thing
Train
Hand holding watch
silver vase
against the plaid
Comfort me
The hedge coming up to meet me that way in the dried red sun
The meadows down I mean
At night
Curious — I'd seen this tall girl
I urge the deep prune of the mirror
That stick she carries
The book — a trap
The facts have hinged on my reply
calm
Hat against the sky
Eyes of forest
memory of cars You buried in the hot avenue: and to all of them, you cannot be and are,
naming me.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Tennis Court Oath"
by .
Copyright © 1962 John Ashbery.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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