Friday, December 5, 2014

Pretend I've Dropped the Subject





Transcription someplace else, if you want to you can find it. Linkless, monologue-less today, finished that and read last night. Seeing Lambchop and Yo La Tengo tonight, selfish, complicit bastard that I am, but not until after trying a new Ethiopian restaurant, story, photos, maybe, tomorrow.








CROSSROADS IN THE PAST

John Ashbery

That night the wind stirred in the forsythia bushes,
but it was a wrong one, blowing in the wrong direction.
“That’s silly. How can there be a wrong direction?
‘It bloweth where it listeth,’ as you know, just as we do
when we make love or do something else there are no rules for.”

I tell you, something went wrong there a while back.
Just don’t ask me what it was. Pretend I’ve dropped the subject.
No, now you’ve got me interested, I want to know
exactly what seems wrong to you, how something could

seem wrong to you. In what way do things get to be wrong?
I’m sitting here dialing my cellphone
with one hand, digging at some obscure pebbles with my shovel
with the other. And then something like braids will stand out,

on horsehair cushions. That armchair is really too lugubrious.
We’ve got to change all the furniture, fumigate the house,
talk our relationship back to its beginnings. Say, you know
that’s probably what’s wrong—the beginnings concept, I mean.
I aver there are no beginnings, though there were perhaps some
sometime. We’d stopped, to look at the poster the movie theater

had placed freestanding on the sidewalk. The lobby cards
drew us in. It was afternoon, we found ourselves
sitting at the end of a row in the balcony; the theater was unexpectedly
crowded. That was the day we first realized we didn’t fully
know our names, yours or mine, and we left quietly
amid the gray snow falling. Twilight had already set in. 



1 comment:

  1. Just a word of caution: In my experience, it's often best NOT to try a new restaurant (Mexican, Ethiopian, or whatever) the night of a concert. Just sayin'. Been there. Venue stalls are not, shall we say, the most well-stocked or sanitary or comfortable. Again, just sayin'. From experience: Metallica, The Who... I could go on. That is all. Enjoy. Wish I could go with. Sounds like a terrific show!

    ReplyDelete