Tensions in the Rocks

by John Ashbery


They changed for dinner. In those days
no one was in a hurry, it was real time
every time. Usually the streets were saddled with fog
at night. In the daytime it mostly blew away.
We kept on living because we knew how.
Maple seeds like paperclips skittered in the allees.
We knew not how many enthusiasts climbed the slope,
nor how long they took. It was, in the words of one,
"beholding" not to know. We eased by.

You can see how the past has come to pass
in the ferns and the sweepings of ore and text
that shadowed such narratives as had been scratched,
as though any hotel guest could wipe the blight away
and in so doing, be redeemed for the moment.
I tell you it was not unseemly.
Little girls gathered in groves to see the wish spelled out,
yet under the hemlocks all was moulting, a fury
of notations, obliterated. We knew who to thank
for the postcard. It was signed, "Love, Harold and Olive."

from Where Shall I Wander