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My head as a reading chair in the coyote zone. |
Summer
There is that sound like the wind
Forgetting in the branches that mean something
Nobody can translate. And there is the sobering “later on,”
When you consider what a thing meant, and put it down.
For the time being the shadow is ample
And hardly seen, divided among the twigs of a tree,
The trees of a forest, just as life is divided up,
between you and me, and among all the others out there.
And the thinning-out phase follows
The period of reflection. And suddenly, to be dying
Is not a little or mean or cheap thing,
Only wearingly, the heat unbearable,
And also the little mindless constructions put upon
Our fantasies of what we did : summer, the ball of pine
needles, The loose fates serving our acts, with token smiles,
Carrying out their instructions too accurately –
Too late to cancel them now – and winter, the twitter
Of cold stars at the pane, that describes with broad gestures
This state of being that is not so big after all.
Summer involves going down as a steep flight of steps
To a narrow ledge over the water. Is this it, then,
This iron comfort, these reasonable taboos,
Or did you mean it when you stopped? And the face
Resembles yours, the one reflected in the water.
John Ashbery
