Shadow Train Read online

  Shadow Train

  Poems

  John Ashbery

  Contents

  Publisher’s Note

  The Pursuit of Happiness

  Punishing the Myth

  Paradoxes and Oxymorons

  Another Chain Letter

  The Ivory Tower

  Every Evening When the Sun Goes Down

  The Freedom of the House

  A Pact with Sullen Death

  White-Collar Crime

  At the Inn

  The Absence of a Noble Presence

  The Prophet Bird

  Qualm

  Breezy Stories

  Oh, Nothing

  Of the Islands

  Farm Film

  Here Everything Is Still Floating

  Joe Leviathan

  Some Old Tires

  A Prison All the Same

  Drunken Americans

  Something Similar

  Penny Parker’s Mistake

  Or in My Throat

  Untilted

  At Lotus Lodge

  Corky’s Car Keys

  Night Life

  Written in the Dark

  Caesura

  The Leasing of September

  On the Terrace of Ingots

  Tide Music

  Unusual Precautions

  Flow Blue

  Hard Times

  “Moi, je suis la tulipe…”

  Catalpas

  We Hesitate

  The Desperado

  The Image of the Shark Confronts the Image of the Little Match Girl

  Songs Without Words

  Indelible, Inedible

  School of Velocity

  Frontispiece

  Everyman’s Library

  Shadow Train

  But Not That One

  The Vegetarians

  About the Author

  Publisher’s Note

  Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.

  But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page.” Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

  In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.

  But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.

  Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s “Disclaimer” as it appears in two different type sizes.

  Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of “Disclaimer,” you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading “Disclaimer” on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead” is a complete line, while the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn” is not.

  Open Road has adopted an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.

  Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.

  Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.

  The Pursuit of Happiness

  It came about that there was no way of passing

  Between the twin partitions that presented

  A unified façade, that of a suburban shopping mall

  In April. One turned, as one does, to other interests

  Such as the tides in the Bay of Fundy. Meanwhile there was one

  Who all unseen came creeping at this scale of visions

  Like the gigantic specter of a cat towering over tiny mice

  About to adjourn the town meeting due to the shadow,

  An incisive s
hadow, too perfect in its outrageous

  Regularity to be called to stand trial again,

  That every blistered tongue welcomed as the first

  Drops scattered by the west wind, and yet, knowing

  That it would always ever afterwards be this way

  Caused the eyes to faint, the ears to ignore warnings.

  We knew how to get by on what comes along, but the idea

  Warning, waiting there like a forest, not emptied, beckons.

  Punishing the Myth

  At first it came easily, with the knowledge of the shadow line

  Picking its way through various landscapes before coming

  To stand far from you, to bless you incidentally

  In sorting out what was best for it, and most suitable,

  Like snow having second thoughts and coming back

  To be wary about this, to embellish that, as though life were a party

  At which work got done. So we wiggled in our separate positions

  And stayed in them for a time. After something has passed

  You begin to see yourself as you would look to yourself on a stage,

  Appearing to someone. But to whom? Ah, that’s just it,

  To have the manners, and the look that comes from having a secret

  Isn’t enough. But that “not enough” isn’t to be worn like a livery,

  To be briefly noticed, yet among whom should it be seen? I haven’t

  Thought about these things in years; that’s my luck.

  In time even the rocks will grow. And if you have curled and dandled

  Your innocence once too often, what attitude isn’t then really yours?

  Paradoxes and Oxymorons

  This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.

  Look at it talking to you. You look out a window

  Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.

  You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

  The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.

  What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,

  Bringing a system of them into play. Play?

  Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

  A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,

  As in the division of grace these long August days

  Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know it

  It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

  It has been played once more. I think you exist only

  To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there

  Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem

  Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

  Another Chain Letter

  He had had it told to him on the sward

  Where the fat men bowl, and told so that no one—

  He least of all—might be sure in the days to come

  Of the exact terms. Then, each turned back

  To his business, as is customary on such occasions.

  Months and months went by. The green squirearchy

  Of the dandelions was falling through the hoop again

  And no one, it seemed, had had the presence of mind

  To initiate proceedings or stop the wheel

  From the number it was backing away from as it stopped:

  It was performing prettily; the puncture stayed unseen;

  The wilderness seemed to like the eclogue about it

  You wrote and performed, but really no one now

  Saw any good in the cause, or any guilt. It was a conspiracy

  Of right-handed notions. Which is how we all

  Became partners in the pastoral doffing, the night we now knew.

  The Ivory Tower

  Another season, proposing a name and a distant resolution.

  And, like the wind, all attention. Those thirsting ears,

  Climbers on what rickety heights, have swept you

  All alone into their confession, for it is as alone

  Each of us stands and surveys this empty cell of time. Well,

  What is there to do? And so a mysterious creeping motion

  Quickens its demonic profile, bringing tears, to these eyes at least,

  Tears of excitement. When was the last time you knew that?

  Yet in the textbooks thereof you keep getting mired

  In a backward innocence, although that too is something

  That must be owned, together with the rest.

  There is always some impurity. Help it along! Make room for it!

  So that in the annals of this year be nothing but what is sobering:

  A porch built on pilings, far out over the sand. Then it doesn’t

  Matter that the deaths come in the wrong order. All has been so easily

  Written about. And you find the right order after all: play, the streets, shopping, time flying.

  Every Evening When the Sun Goes Down

  The helmeted head is tilted up at you again

  Through a question. Booze and pills?

  Probably it has no cachet or real status

  Beyond the spokes of the web of good intentions

  That radiate a certain distance out from the crater, that is the smile,

  That began it? Do you see yourself

  Covered by this uniform of half regrets and

  Inadmissible satisfactions, dazzling as the shower

  Sucked back up into the peacock’s-feather eye in the sky

  As though through a straw, to connect up with your brain,

  The thing given you tonight to wrestle with like an angel

  Until dawn? The snuffer says it better. The cone

  Squelches the wick, the insulted smoke jerks ceilingward

  In the long time since we have been afraid, while the host

  Is looking for ice cubes and a glass, is gone

  Into the similarity of firmaments. “One last question.”

  The Freedom of the House

  A few more might have survived the fall

  To read the afternoon away, navigating

  In sullen peace, a finger at the lips,

  From the beginning of one surf point to the end,

  And again, and may have wondered why being alone

  Is the condition of happiness, the substance

  Of the golden hints, articulation in the hall outside,

  And the condition as well of using that knowledge

  To pleasure, always in confinement? Otherwise it fades

  Like the rejoicing at the beginning of an opera, since we know

  The seriousness of what lies ahead: that we can split open

  The ripe exchanges, kisses, sighs, only in unholy

  Solitude, and sample them here. It means that a disguised fate

  Is weaving a net of heat lightning on the horizon, and that this

  Will be neither bad nor good when experienced. Meanwhile

  The night has been pushed back again, but cannot say where it has been.

  A Pact with Sullen Death

  Clearly the song will have to wait

  Until the time when everything is serious.

  Martyrs of fixed eye, with a special sigh,

  Set down their goads. The skies have endured

  Too long to be blasted into perdition this way,

  And they fall, awash with blood and flowers.

  In the dream next door they are still changing,

  And the wakening changes too, into life.

  “Is this life?” Yes, the last minute was too—

  And the joy of informing takes over

  Like the crackle of artillery fire in the outer suburbs

  And I was going to wish that you too were the “I”

  In the novel told in the first person that

  This breathy waiting is, that we could crash through

  The sobbing underbrush to the laughter that is under the ground,

  Since anyone can wa
it. We have only to begin on time.

  White-Collar Crime

  Now that you’ve done it, say OK, that’s it for a while.

  His fault wasn’t great; it was over-eagerness; it didn’t deserve

  The death penalty, but it’s different when it happens

  In your neighborhood, on your doorstep; the dropping light spoilt nicely his

  Name tags and leggings; all those things that belonged to him,

  As it were, were thrown out overnight, onto the street.

  So much for fashion. The moon decrees

  That it be with us awhile to enhance the atmosphere

  But in the long run serious concerns prevail, such as

  What time is it and what are you going to do about that?

  Gaily inventing brand names, place-names, you were surrounded

  By such abundance, yet it seems only fair to start taking in

  The washing now. There was a boy. Yet by the time the program

  Is over, it turns out there was enough time and more than enough things

  For everybody to latch on to, and that in essence it’s there, the

  Young people and their sweet names falling, almost too many of these.

  At the Inn

  It was me here. Though. And whether this

  Be rebus or me now, the way the grass is planted—

  Red stretching far out to the horizon—

  Surely prevails now. I shall return in the dark and be seen,

  Be led to my own room by well-intentioned hands,

  Placed in a box with a lid whose underside is dark

  So as to grow, and shall grow

  Taller than plumes out on the ocean,

  Grazing historically. And shall see

  The end of much learning, and other things

  Out of control and it ends too soon, before hanging up.

  So, laying his cheek against the dresser’s wooden one,

  He died making up stories, the ones

  Not every child wanted to listen to.

  And for a while it seemed that the road back

  Was a track bombarded by stubble like a snow.