Some Trees: Poems Read online

  Some Trees

  Poems

  John Ashbery

  to my parents

  Contents

  Publisher’s Note

  Two Scenes

  Popular Songs

  Eclogue

  The Instruction Manual

  The Grapevine

  A Boy

  Glazunoviana

  The Hero

  Poem

  Album Leaf

  The Picture of Little J. A. in a Prospect of Flowers

  Pantoum

  Grand Abacus

  The Mythological Poet

  Sonnet

  Chaos

  The Orioles

  The Young Son

  The Thinnest Shadow

  Canzone

  Errors

  Illustration

  Some Trees

  Hotel Dauphin

  The Painter

  And You Know

  He

  Meditations of a Parrot

  Sonnet

  A Long Novel

  The Way They Took

  The Pied Piper

  Answering a Question in the Mountains

  A Pastoral

  Le livre est sur la table

  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.

  Two Scenes

  I

  We see us as we truly behave:

  From every corner comes a distinctive offering.

  The train comes bearing joy;

  The sparks it strikes illuminate the table.

  Destiny guides the water-pilot, and it is destiny.

  For long we hadn’t heard so much news, such noise.

  The day was warm and pleasant.

  “We see you in your hair,

  Air resting around the tips of mountains.”

  II

  A fine rain anoints the canal machinery.

  This is perhaps a day of general honesty

  Without example in the world’s history

  Though the fumes are not of a singular authority

  And indeed are dry as poverty.

  Terrific units are on an old man

  In the blue shadow of some paint cans

  As laughing cadets say, “In the evening

  Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is.”

  Popular Songs

  He continued to consult her for her beauty

  (The host gone to a longing grave).

  The story then
resumed in day coaches

  Both bravely eyed the finer dust on the blue. That summer

  (“The worst ever”) she stayed in the car with the cur.

  That was something between her legs.

  Alton had been getting letters from his mother

  About the payments—half the flood

  Over and what about the net rest of the year?

  Who cares? Anyway (you know how thirsty they were)

  The extra worry began it—on the

  Blue blue mountain—she never set foot

  And then and there. Meanwhile the host

  Mourned her quiet tenure. They all stayed chatting.

  No one did much about eating.

  The tears came and stopped, came and stopped, until

  Becoming the guano-lightened summer night landscape,

  All one glow, one mild laugh lasting ages.

  Some precision, he fumed into his soup.

  You laugh. There is no peace in the fountain.

  The footmen smile and shift. The mountain

  Rises nightly to disappointed stands

  Dining in “The Gardens of the Moon.”

  There is no way to prevent this

  Or the expectation of disappointment.

  All are aware, some carry a secret

  Better, of hands emulating deeds

  Of days untrustworthy. But these may decide.

  The face extended its sorrowing light

  Far out over them. And now silent as a group

  The actors prepare their first decline.

  Eclogue

  Cuddie: Slowly all your secret is had

  In the empty day. People and sticks go down to the water.

  How can we be so silent? Only shivers

  Are bred in this land of whistling goats.

  Colin: Father, I have long dreamed your whitened

  Face and sides to accost me in dull play.

  If you in your bush indeed know her

  Where shall my heart’s vagrant tides place her?

  Cuddie: A wish is induced by a sudden change

  In the wind’s decay. Shall we to the water’s edge,

  O prince? The peons rant in a light fume.

  Madness will gaze at its reflection.

  Colin: What is this pain come near me?

  Now I thought my heart would burst,

  And there, spiked like some cadenza’s head,

  A tiny crippled heart was born.

  Cuddie: I tell you good will imitate this.

  Now we must dip in raw water

  These few thoughts and fleshy members.

  So evil may refresh our days.

  Colin: She has descended part way!

  Now father cut me down with tears.

  Plant me far in my mother’s image

  To do cold work of books and stones.

  Cuddie: I need not raise my hand

  Colin: She burns the flying peoples

  Cuddie: To hear its old advice

  Colin: And spears my heart’s two beasts

  Cuddie: Or cover with its mauves.

  Colin: And I depart unhurt.

  The Instruction Manual

  As I sit looking out of a window of the building

  I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

  I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,

  And envy them—they are so far away from me!

  Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.

  And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,

  Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!

  City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!

  But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,

  Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!

  The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.

  Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose-and lemon-colored flowers,

  Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),

  And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.

  The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.

  First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow

  Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat

  And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.

  His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.

  Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,

  And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.

  But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one

  I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.

  Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk

  Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.

  He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.

  But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.

  Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,

  And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.

  But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.

  Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,

  Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl

  Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying

  But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.

  She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.

  She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.

  Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;

  His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,

  I see there is an intermission in the concert.

  The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws

  (The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue),

  And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk

  About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school.

  Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets.

  Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim

  That are so popular here. Look—I told you!

  It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny.

  An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan.

  She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink.

  “My son is in Mexico City,” she says. “He would welcome you too

  If he were here. But his job is with a bank there.

  Look, here is a photograph of him.”

  And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame.

  We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late

  And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place.

  That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter.

  The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here.

  His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower.

  Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us.

  There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces.

  There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue.

  There is the market, where men
are selling hats and swatting flies

  And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige.

  Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders.

  There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased,

  But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand.

  And there is the home of the little old lady—

  She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself.

  How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!

  We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son.

  We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses.

  What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do.

  And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my gaze

  Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara.

  The Grapevine

  Of who we and all they are

  You all now know. But you know

  After they began to find us out we grew

  Before they died thinking us the causes

  Of their acts. Now we’ll not know

  The truth of some still at the piano, though

  They often date from us, causing

  These changes we think we are. We don’t care

  Though, so tall up there

  In young air. But things get darker as we move

  To ask them: Whom must we get to know

  To die, so you live and we know?

  A Boy

  I’ll do what the raids suggest,

  Dad, and that other livid window,

  But the tide pushes an awful lot of monsters

  And I think it’s my true fate.

  It had been raining but

  It had not been raining.

  No one could begin to mop up this particular mess.

  Thunder lay down in the heart.

  “My child, I love any vast electrical disturbance.”

  Disturbance! Could the old man, face in the rainweed,

  Ask more smuttily? By night it charged over plains,

  Driven from Dallas and Oregon, always whither,