The Double Dream of Spring

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Authors: John Ashbery
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you into so much outside, the candor
    Of what had been going on makes you pause momentarily,
    A bag of October, without being able to tell it
    To the others, so that it loses silence.
    I haven’t made clear that I want it all from you
    In writing, so as to study your facial expressions
    Simultaneously: hesitations, reverse darts, the sky
    Of your plans run through with many sutured points.
    Only in this way can a true basis for understanding be
    Set up. But meanwhile if I try to turn away
    Looking for my own shadow in the excess
    Like quarreling jays our heads fall to in agreement.
    It exposed us on a moving gangway.
    Leaning from an upper story
    We should not separate in misunderstanding.
    Where you were going was the key to
    Saturday afternoon spent in shopping and washing dishes
    Just right so the newly strengthened land would
    Disinter the music box what keeps happening to
    The photo of a baby girl disguised as an old man
    With a long white beard. What comes after
    The purge, she not mentioning it yet.
    This meant (and the tone voice, repeating
    “He’s hurt real bad” worked up the wall of celerity
    To inaudible foam) all divers and all speechless
    Apostrophes of solar unit stay on the bottom.
    At last there was a chance to explore the forest,
    Shadow of yawning magnetic poles, in which the castle
    Had been inserted like an afterthought—bare walls
    With somewhere a center and even further, a widening
    To accommodate eventual reaction, such as ropes,
    Pikes, chains of memory, of sleep, and an end of board.
    The apotheosis had sunk away
    As wind incarnates its glass cone
    Aiming where further identifications should
    Not be worked for, are reached. The whole
    Is a mound of changing valors for some who
    Live out as under a dome, are participated in
    As the ordinary grandeur of a dome’s the thing that
    Keeps them living so that additional grace
    Is eternal procrastination, not to be considered
    Unless a description of the actual scene.
    Shedding perennial beauty on angles
    Of questions asked and often answered in a
    Given period. It all moves more slowly, yet
    The change is more complete than ever before:
    A pessimistic lighting up as of autumn woods
    Demanding more than ever to be considered, for full
    Substance. For the calculable stutter of a laugh.
    Returning late you were not surprised to meet
    This gray visitor, perpendicular to the weather.
    Quiet ambition of the note variously sounded.
    All space was to be shut out. Now there was no
    Earthly reason for living; solitude proceeded
    From want of money, her quincunxes standing
    To protect the stillness of the air. Darkness
    Intruded everywhere. This was the first day
    Of the new experience. The familiar brown trees
    Stirred indifferent at their roots, deeply transformed.
    Like a sail its question disappeared into
    An ocean of newsprint. To be precipitated
    In desire, as hats are handed. Awnings raised.
    Coming in the phaeton to the end of the
    Day that had served on previous occasions
    An orchard diminishes the already tiny
    Notion of abstract good and bad qualities
    Pod of darkness which goes vociferating early
    Unchangeables that in time’s mire have hid weapons.
    Past waterfall wooden huts open places
    Assaulted by the wind, the usual surroundings chafed
    Foreknowledge of the immense journey, as the sea
    Flattens, uncritical, beyond wide docks.
    To persist in the revision of very old
    Studies, as though mounted on a charger,
    With the door to the next room partly open
    To the borrowed density, what keeps happening to
    So much dead surprise, a weight of spring.
    An odor of explosives hangs over the change,
    Now at its apogee. This presupposes a will
    To carry out all instructions, dotting the last i
    Though cancelling with one stroke of a pen all
    The provisions, revisions and so on made until now.
    But why should the present seem so particularly urgent?
    A time of spotted lakes and the whippoorwill
    Sounding over everything? To release the importance
    Of what

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