John Ashbery

 

 

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

 

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand

Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer

And swerving easily away, as though to protect

What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,

Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together

In a movement supporting the face, which swims

Toward and away like the hand

Except that it is in repose. It is what is

Sequestered. Vasari says, "Francesco one day set himself

To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose

In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . .

He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made

By a turner, and having divided it in half and

Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself

With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass,"

Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait

Is the reflection, of which the portrait

Is the reflection once removed.

The glass chose to reflect only what he saw

Which was enough for his purpose: his image

Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle.

The time of day or the density of the light

Adhering to the face keeps it

Lively and intact in a recurring wave

Of arrival. The soul establishes itself.

But how far can it swim out through the eyes

And still return safely to its nest? The surface

Of the mirror being convex, the distance increases

Significantly; that is, enough to make the point

That the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept

In suspension, unable to advance much farther

Than your look as it intercepts the picture.

Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied"

By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission

That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is,

Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,

The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,

Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay

Posing in this place. It must move

As little as possible. This is what the portrait says.

But there is in that gaze a combination

Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful

In its restraint that one cannot look for long.

The secret is too plain. The pity of it smarts,

Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul,

Has no secret, is small, and it fits

Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.

That is the tune but there are no words.

The words are only speculation

(From the Latin speculum, mirror):

They seek and cannot find the meaning of the music.

We see only postures of the dream,

Riders of the motion that swings the face

Into view under evening skies, with no

False disarray as proof of authenticity.

But it is life englobed.

One would like to stick one's hand

Out of the globe, but its dimension,

What carries it, will not allow it.

No doubt it is this, not the reflex

To hide something, which makes the hand loom large

As it retreats slightly. There is no way

To build it flat like a section of wall:

It must join the segment of a circle,

Roving back to the body of which it seems

So unlikely a part, to fence in and shore up the face

On which the effort of this condition reads

Like a pinpoint of a smile, a spark

Or star one is not sure of having seen

As darkness resumes. A perverse light whose

Imperative of subtlety dooms in advance its

Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant.

Francesco, your hand is big enough

To wreck the sphere, and too big,

One would think, to weave delicate meshes

That only argue its further detention.

(Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale,

Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom

In relation to the tiny, self-important ship

On the surface.) But your eyes proclaim

That everything is surface. The surface is what's there

And nothing can exist except what's there.

There are no recesses in the room, only alcoves,

And the window doesn't matter much, or that

Sliver of window or mirror on the right, even

As a gauge of the weather, which in French is

Le temps, the word for time, and which

Follows a course wherein changes are merely

Features of the whole. The whole is stable within

Instability, a globe like ours, resting

On a pedestal of vacuum, a ping-pong ball

Secure on its jet of water.

And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,

No words to say what it really is, that it is not

Superficial but a visible core, then there is

No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.

You will stay on, restive, serene in

Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning

But which holds something of both in pure

Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.

 

The balloon pops, the attention

Turns dully away. Clouds

In the puddle stir up into sawtoothed fragments.

I think of the friends

Who came to see me, of what yesterday

Was like. A peculiar slant

Of memory that intrudes on the dreaming model

In the silence of the studio as he considers

Lifting the pencil to the self-portrait.

How many people came and stayed a certain time,

Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you

Like light behind windblown fog and sand,

Filtered and influenced by it, until no part

Remains that is surely you. Those voices in the dusk

Have told you all and still the tale goes on

In the form of memories deposited in irregular

Clumps of crystals. Whose curved hand controls,

Francesco, the turning seasons and the thoughts

That peel off and fly away at breathless speeds

Like the last stubborn leaves ripped

From wet branches? I see in this only the chaos

Of your round mirror which organizes everything

Around the polestar of your eyes which are empty,

Know nothing, dream but reveal nothing.

I feel the carousel starting slowly

And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,

Photographs of friends, the window and the trees

Merging in one neutral band that surrounds

Me on all sides, everywhere I look.

And I cannot explain the action of leveling,

Why it should all boil down to one

Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.

My guide in these matters is your self,

Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same

Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon

Much later, I can know only the straight way out,

The distance between us. Long ago

The strewn evidence meant something,

The small accidents and pleasures

Of the day as it moved gracelessly on,

A housewife doing chores. Impossible now

To restore those properties in the silver blur that is

The record of what you accomplished by sitting down

"With great art to copy all that you saw in the glass"

So as to perfect and rule out the extraneous

Forever. In the circle of your intentions certain spars

Remain that perpetuate the enchantment of self with self:

Eyebeams, muslin, coral. It doesn't matter

Because these are things as they are today

Before one's shadow ever grew

Out of the field into thoughts of tomorrow.

 

Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted,

Desolate, reluctant as any landscape

To yield what are laws of perspective

After all only to the painter's deep

Mistrust, a weak instrument though

Necessary. Of course some things

Are possible, it knows, but it doesn't know

Which ones. Some day we will try

To do as many things as are possible

And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful

Of them, but this will not have anything

To do with what is promised today, our

Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear

On the horizon. Today enough of a cover burnishes

To keep the supposition of promises together

In one piece of surface, letting one ramble

Back home from them so that these

Even stronger possibilities can remain

Whole without being tested. Actually

The skin of the bubble-chamber's as tough as

Reptile eggs; everything gets "programmed" there

In due course: more keeps getting included

Without adding to the sum, and just as one

Gets accustomed to a noise that

Kept one awake but now no longer does,

So the room contains this flow like an hourglass

Without varying in climate or quality

(Except perhaps to brighten bleakly and almost

Invisibly, in a focus sharpening toward death--more

Of this later). What should be the vacuum of a dream

Becomes continually replete as the source of dreams

Is being tapped so that this one dream

May wax, flourish like a cabbage rose,

Defying sumptuary laws, leaving us

To awake and try to begin living in what

Has now become a slum. Sydney Freedberg in his

Parmigianino says of it: "Realism in this portrait

No longer produces and objective truth, but a bizarria . . . .

However its distortion does not create

A feeling of disharmony . . . . The forms retain

A strong measure of ideal beauty," because

Fed by our dreams, so inconsequential until one day

We notice the hole they left. Now their importance

If not their meaning is plain. They were to nourish

A dream which includes them all, as they are

Finally reversed in the accumulating mirror.

They seemed strange because we couldn't actually see them.

And we realize this only at a point where they lapse

Like a wave breaking on a rock, giving up

Its shape in a gesture which expresses that shape.

The forms retain a strong measure of ideal beauty

As they forage in secret on our idea of distortion.

Why be unhappy with this arrangement, since

Dreams prolong us as they are absorbed?

Something like living occurs, a movement

Out of the dream into its codification.

 

As I start to forget it

It presents its stereotype again

But it is an unfamiliar stereotype, the face

Riding at anchor, issued from hazards, soon

To accost others, "rather angel than man" (Vasari).

Perhaps an angel looks like everything

We have forgotten, I mean forgotten

Things that don't seem familiar when

We meet them again, lost beyond telling,

Which were ours once. This would be the point

Of invading the privacy of this man who

"Dabbled in alchemy, but whose wish

Here was not to examine the subtleties of art

In a detached, scientific spirit: he wished through them

To impart the sense of novelty and amazement to the spectator"

(Freedberg). Later portraits such as the Uffizi

"Gentleman," the Borghese "Young Prelate" and

The Naples "Antea" issue from Mannerist

Tensions, but here, as Freedberg points out,

The surprise, the tension are in the concept

Rather than its realization.

The consonance of the High Renaissance

Is present, though distorted by the mirror.

What is novel is the extreme care in rendering

The velleities of the rounded reflecting surface

(It is the first mirror portrait),

So that you could be fooled for a moment

Before you realize the reflection

Isn't yours. You feel then like one of those

Hoffmann characters who have been deprived

Of a reflection, except that the whole of me

Is seen to be supplanted by the strict

Otherness of the painter in his

Other room. We have surprised him

At work, but no, he has surprised us

As he works. The picture is almost finished,

The surprise almost over, as when one looks out,

Startled by a snowfall which even now is

Ending in specks and sparkles of snow.

It happened while you were inside, asleep,

And there is no reason why you should have

Been awake for it, except that the day

Is ending and it will be hard for you

To get to sleep tonight, at least until late.

 

The shadow of the city injects its own

Urgency: Rome where Francesco

Was at work during the Sack: his inventions

Amazed the soldiers who burst in on him;

They decided to spare his life, but he left soon after;

Vienna where the painting is today, where

I saw it with Pierre in the summer of 1959; New York

Where I am now, which is a logarithm

Of other cities. Our landscape

Is alive with filiations, shuttlings;

Business is carried on by look, gesture,

Hearsay. It is another life to the city,

The backing of the looking glass of the

Unidentified but precisely sketched studio. It wants

To siphon off the life of the studio, deflate

Its mapped space to enactments, island it.

That operation has been temporarily stalled

But something new is on the way, a new preciosity

In the wind. Can you stand it,

Francesco? Are you strong enough for it?

This wind brings what it knows not, is

Self--propelled, blind, has no notion

Of itself. It is inertia that once

Acknowledged saps all activity, secret or public:

Whispers of the word that can't be understood

But can be felt, a chill, a blight

Moving outward along the capes and peninsulas

Of your nervures and so to the archipelagoes

And to the bathed, aired secrecy of the open sea.

This is its negative side. Its positive side is

Making you notice life and the stresses

That only seemed to go away, but now,

As this new mode questions, are seen to be

Hastening out of style. If they are to become classics

They must decide which side they are on.

Their reticence has undermined

The urban scenery, made its ambiguities

Look willful and tired, the games of an old man.

What we need now is this unlikely

Challenger pounding on the gates of an amazed

Castle. Your argument, Francesco,

Had begun to grow stale as no answer

Or answers were forthcoming. If it dissolves now

Into dust, that only means its time had come

Some time ago, but look now, and listen:

It may be that another life is stocked there

In recesses no one knew of; that it,

Not we, are the change; that we are in fact it

If we could get back to it, relive some of the way

It looked, turn our faces to the globe as it sets

And still be coming out all right:

Nerves normal, breath normal. Since it is a metaphor

Made to include us, we are a part of it and

Can live in it as in fact we have done,

Only leaving our minds bare for questioning

We now see will not take place at random

But in an orderly way that means to menace

Nobody--the normal way things are done,

Like the concentric growing up of days

Around a life: correctly, if you think about it.

 

A breeze like the turning of a page

Brings back your face: the moment

Takes such a big bite out of the haze

Of pleasant intuition it comes after.

The locking into place is "death itself,"

As Berg said of a phrase in Mahler's Ninth;

Or, to quote Imogen in Cymbeline, "There cannot

Be a pinch in death more sharp than this," for,

Though only exercise or tactic, it carries

The momentum of a conviction that had been building.

Mere forgetfulness cannot remove it

Nor wishing bring it back, as long as it remains

The white precipitate of its dream

In the climate of sighs flung across our world,

A cloth over a birdcage. But it is certain that

What is beautiful seems so only in relation to a specific

Life, experienced or not, channeled into some form

Steeped in the nostalgia of a collective past.

The light sinks today with an enthusiasm

I have known elsewhere, and known why

It seemed meaningful, that others felt this way

Years ago. I go on consulting

This mirror that is no longer mine

For as much brisk vacancy as is to be

My portion this time. And the vase is always full

Because there is only just so much room

And it accommodates everything. The sample

One sees is not to be taken as

Merely that, but as everything as it

May be imagined outside time--not as a gesture

But as all, in the refined, assimilable state.

But what is this universe the porch of

As it veers in and out, back and forth,

Refusing to surround us and still the only

Thing we can see? Love once

Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,

Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.

But we know it cannot be sandwiched

Between two adjacent moments, that its windings

Lead nowhere except to further tributaries

And that these empty themselves into a vague

Sense of something that can never be known

Even though it seems likely that each of us

Knows what it is and is capable of

Communicating it to the other. But the look

Some wear as a sign makes one want to

Push forward ignoring the apparent

NaÏveté of the attempt, not caring

That no one is listening, since the light

Has been lit once and for all in their eyes

And is present, unimpaired, a permanent anomaly,

Awake and silent. On the surface of it

There seems no special reason why that light

Should be focused by love, or why

The city falling with its beautiful suburbs

Into space always less clear, less defined,

Should read as the support of its progress,

The easel upon which the drama unfolded

To its own satisfaction and to the end

Of our dreaming, as we had never imagined

It would end, in worn daylight with the painted

Promise showing through as a gage, a bond.

This nondescript, never-to-be defined daytime is

The secret of where it takes place

And we can no longer return to the various

Conflicting statements gathered, lapses of memory

Of the principal witnesses. All we know

Is that we are a little early, that

Today has that special, lapidary

Todayness that the sunlight reproduces

Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe

Sidewalks. No previous day would have been like this.

I used to think they were all alike,

That the present always looked the same to everybody

But this confusion drains away as one

Is always cresting into one's present.

Yet the "poetic," straw-colored space

Of the long corridor that leads back to the painting,

Its darkening opposite--is this

Some figment of "art," not to be imagined

As real, let alone special? Hasn't it too its lair

In the present we are always escaping from

And falling back into, as the waterwheel of days

Pursues its uneventful, even serene course?

I think it is trying to say it is today

And we must get out of it even as the public

Is pushing through the museum now so as to

Be out by closing time. You can't live there.

The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how:

Secrets of wash and finish that took a lifetime

To learn and are reduced to the status of

Black-and-white illustrations in a book where colorplates

Are rare. That is, all time

Reduces to no special time. No one

Alludes to the change; to do so might

Involve calling attention to oneself

Which would augment the dread of not getting out

Before having seen the whole collection

(Except for the sculptures in the basement:

They are where they belong).

Our time gets to be veiled, compromised

By the portrait's will to endure. It hints at

Our own, which we were hoping to keep hidden.

We don't need paintings or

Doggerel written by mature poets when

The explosion is so precise, so fine.

Is there any point even in acknowledging

The existence of all that? Does it

Exist? Certainly the leisure to

Indulge stately pastimes doesn't,

Any more. Today has no margins, the event arrives

Flush with its edges, is of the same substance,

Indistinguishable. "Play" is something else;

It exists, in a society specifically

Organized as a demonstration of itself.

There is no other way, and those assholes

Who would confuse everything with their mirror games

Which seem to multiply stakes and possibilities, or

At least confuse issues by means of an investing

Aura that would corrode the architecture

Of the whole in a haze of suppressed mockery,

Are beside the point. They are out of the game,

Which doesn't exist until they are out of it.

It seems like a very hostile universe

But as the principle of each individual thing is

Hostile to, exists at the expense of all the others

As philosophers have often pointed out, at least

This thing, the mute, undivided present,

Has the justification of logic, which

In this instance isn't a bad thing

Or wouldn't be, if the way of telling

Didn't somehow intrude, twisting the end result

Into a caricature of itself. This always

Happens, as in the game where

A whispered phrase passed around the room

Ends up as something completely different.

It is the principle that makes works of art so unlike

What the artist intended. Often he finds

He has omitted the thing he started out to say

In the first place. Seduced by flowers,

Explicit pleasures, he blames himself (though

Secretly satisfied with the result), imagining

He had a say in the matter and exercised

An option of which he was hardly conscious,

Unaware that necessity circumvents such resolutions.

So as to create something new

For itself, that there is no other way,

That the history of creation proceeds according to

Stringent laws, and that things

Do get done in this way, but never the things

We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately

To see come into being. Parmigianino

Must have realized this as he worked at his

Life-obstructing task. One is forced to read

The perfectly plausible accomplishment of a purpose

Into the smooth, perhaps even bland (but so

Enigmatic) finish. Is there anything

To be serious about beyond this otherness

That gets included in the most ordinary

Forms of daily activity, changing everything

Slightly and profoundly, and tearing the matter

Of creation, any creation, not just artistic creation

Out of our hands, to install it on some monstrous, near

Peak, too close to ignore, too far

For one to intervene? This otherness, this

"Not-being-us" is all there is to look at

In the mirror, though no one can say

How it came to be this way. A ship

Flying unknown colors has entered the harbor.

You are allowing extraneous matters

To break up your day, cloud the focus

Of the crystal ball. Its scene drifts away

Like vapor scattered on the wind. The fertile

Thought-associations that until now came

So easily, appear no more, or rarely. Their

Colorings are less intense, washed out

By autumn rains and winds, spoiled, muddied,

Given back to you because they are worthless.

Yet we are such creatures of habit that their

Implications are still around en permanence, confusing

Issues. To be serious only about sex

Is perhaps one way, but the sands are hissing

As they approach the beginning of the big slide

Into what happened. This past

Is now here: the painter's

Reflected face, in which we linger, receiving

Dreams and inspirations on an unassigned

Frequency, but the hues have turned metallic,

The curves and edges are not so rich. Each person

Has one big theory to explain the universe

But it doesn't tell the whole story

And in the end it is what is outside him

That matters, to him and especially to us

Who have been given no help whatever

In decoding our own man-size quotient and must rely

On second-hand knowledge. Yet I know

That no one else's taste is going to be

Any help, and might as well be ignored.

Once it seemed so perfect--gloss on the fine

Freckled skin, lips moistened as though about to part

Releasing speech, and the familiar look

Of clothes and furniture that one forgets.

This could have been our paradise: exotic

Refuge within an exhausted world, but that wasn't

In the cards, because it couldn't have been

The point. Aping naturalness may be the first step

Toward achieving an inner calm

But it is the first step only, and often

Remains a frozen gesture of welcome etched

On the air materializing behind it,

A convention. And we have really

No time for these, except to use them

For kindling. The sooner they are burnt up

The better for the roles we have to play.

Therefore I beseech you, withdraw that hand,

Offer it no longer as shield or greeting,

The shield of a greeting, Francesco:

There is room for one bullet in the chamber:

Our looking through the wrong end

Of the telescope as you fall back at a speed

Faster than that of light to flatten ultimately

Among the features of the room, an invitation

Never mailed, the "it was all a dream"

Syndrome, though the "all" tells tersely

Enough how it wasn't. Its existence

Was real, though troubled, and the ache

Of this waking dream can never drown out

The diagram still sketched on the wind,

Chosen, meant for me and materialized

In the disguising radiance of my room.

We have seen the city; it is the gibbous

Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen

On its balcony and are resumed within,

But the action is the cold, syrupy flow

Of a pageant. One feels too confined,

Sifting the April sunlight for clues,

In the mere stillness of the ease of its

Parameter. The hand holds no chalk

And each part of the whole falls off

And cannot know it knew, except

Here and there, in cold pockets

Of remembrance, whispers out of time.

 

 

Into the Dusk-Charged Air

 

Far from the Rappahannock, the silent

Danube moves along toward the sea.

The brown and green Nile rolls slowly

Like the Niagara's welling descent.

Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire

Near where it joined the Cher.

The St. Lawrence prods among black stones

And mud. But the Arno is all stones.

Wind ruffles the Hudson's

Surface. The Irawaddy is overflowing.

But the yellowish, gray Tiber

Is contained within steep banks. The Isar

Flows too fast to swim in, the Jordan's water

Courses over the flat land. The Allegheny and its boats

Were dark blue. The Moskowa is

Gray boats. The Amstel flows slowly.

Leaves fall into the Connecticut as it passes

Underneath. The Liffey is full of sewage,

Like the Seine, but unlike

The brownish-yellow Dordogne.

Mountains hem in the Colorado

And the Oder is very deep, almost

As deep as the Congo is wide.

The plain banks of the Neva are

Gray. The dark Saône flows silently.

And the Volga is long and wide

As it flows across the brownish land. The Ebro

Is blue, and slow. The Shannon flows

Swiftly between its banks. The Mississippi

Is one of the world's longest rivers, like the Amazon.

It has the Missouri for a tributary.

The Harlem flows amid factories

And buildings. The Nelson is in Canada,

Flowing. Through hard banks the Dubawnt

Forces its way. People walk near the Trent.

The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away;

The Rubicon is merely a brook.

In winter the Main

Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.

The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks

And the Rio Grande spins tales of the past.

The Loir bursts its frozen shackles

But the Moldau's wet mud ensnares it.

The East catches the light.

Near the Escaut the noise of factories echoes

And the sinuous Humboldt gurgles wildly.

The Po too flows, and the many-colored

Thames. Into the Atlantic Ocean

Pours the Garonne. Few ships navigate

On the Housatonic, but quite a few can be seen

On the Elbe. For centuries

The Afton has flowed.

If the Rio Negro

Could abandon its song, and the Magdalena

The jungle flowers, the Tagus

Would still flow serenely, and the Ohio

Abrade its slate banks. The tan Euphrates would

Sidle silently across the world. The Yukon

Was choked with ice, but the Susquehanna still pushed

Bravely along. The Dee caught the day's last flares

Like the Pilcomayo's carrion rose.

The Peace offered eternal fragrance

Perhaps, but the Mackenzie churned livid mud

Like tan chalk-marks. Near where

The Brahmaputra slapped swollen dikes

And the Pechora? The São Francisco

Skulks amid gray, rubbery nettles. The Liard's

Reflexes are slow, and the Arkansas erodes

Anthracite hummocks. The Paraná stinks.

The Ottawa is light emerald green

Among grays. Better that the Indus fade

In steaming sands! Let the Brazos

Freeze solid! And the Wabash turn to a leaden

Cinder of ice! The Marañón is too tepid, we must

Find a way to freeze it hard. The Ural

Is freezing slowly in the blasts. The black Yonne

Congeals nicely. And the Petit-Morin

Curls up on the solid earth. The Inn

Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack's

Galvanized. The Ganges is liquid snow by now;

The Vyatka's ice-gray. The once-molten Tennessee s

Curdled. The Japurá is a pack of ice. Gelid

The Columbia's gray loam banks. The Don's merely

A giant icicle. The Niger freezes, slowly.

The interminable Lena plods on

But the Purus' mercurial waters are icy, grim

With cold. The Loing is choked with fragments of ice.

The Weser is frozen, like liquid air.

And so is the Kama. And the beige, thickly flowing

Tocantins. The rivers bask in the cold.

The stern Uruguay chafes its banks,

A mass of ice. The Hooghly is solid

Ice. The Adour is silent, motionless.

The lovely Tigris is nothing but scratchy ice

Like the Yellowstone, with its osier-clustered banks.

The Mekong is beginning to thaw out a little

And the Donets gurgles beneath the

Huge blocks of ice. The Manzanares gushes free.

The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.

But the Dnieper is still ice-bound. Somewhere

The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt's

Frozen. The Oka is frozen solider

Than the Somme. The Minho slumbers

In winter, nor does the Snake

Remember August. Hilarious, the Canadian

Is solid ice. The Madeira slavers

Across the thawing fields, and the Plata laughs.

The Dvina soaks up the snow. The Sava's

Temperature is above freezing. The Avon

Carols noiselessly. The Drôme presses

Grass banks; the Adige's frozen

Surface is like gray pebbles.

 

Birds circle the Ticino. In winter

The Var was dark blue, unfrozen. The

Thwaite, cold, is choked with sandy ice;

The Ardèche glistens feebly through the freezing rain.


Paradoxes and Oxymorons (1981)

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 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.

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