The Improvement by John Ashbery

John Ashbery

The Improvement by John Ashbery

T.

Cleaning and cleaning and cleaning today. Letting go.

The Improvement

John Ashbery

Is that where it happens?

Only yesterday when I came back, I had this

diaphanous disaffection for this room, for spaces,

for the whole sky and whatever lies beyond.

I felt the eggplant, then the rhubarb.

Nothing seems strong enough for

this life to manage, that sees beyond

into particles forming some kind of entity?

so we get dressed kindly, crazy at the moment.

A life of afterwords begins.

We never live long enough in our lives

to know what today is like.

Shards, smiling beaches,

abandon us somehow even as we converse with them.

And the leopard is transparent, like iced tea.

I wake up, my face pressed

in the dewy mess of a dream. It mattered,

because of the dream, and because dreams are by nature sad

even when there’s a lot of exclaiming and beating

as there was in this one. I want the openness

of the dream turned inside out, exploded

into pieces of meaning by its own unasked questions,

beyond the calculations of heaven. Then the larkspur

would don its own disproportionate weight,

and trees return to the starting gate.

See, our lips bend.

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poetry