For John Clare by John Ashbery

Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and salutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace everything--bush and tree--to take the roisterer's mind off his caroling--so it's like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in their previous conniption fit. There is so much to be seen everywhere that it's like not getting used to it, only there is so much it never feels new, never any different. You are standing looking at that building and you cannot take it all in, certain details are already hazy and the mind boggles. What will it all be like in five years' time when you try to remember? Will there have been boards in between the grass part and the edge of the street? As long as that couple is stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go. We feel like they have to tell us we can, but they never look our way and they are already gone, gone far into the future--the night of time. If we could look at a photograph of it and say there they are, they never really stopped but there they are. There is so much to be said, and on the surface of it very little gets said. 

There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like. Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope --letting them come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much easier--if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one's blood. Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be put aside-- costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the end of a narrow enclosed street. You can do nothing with them. Not even offer to pay. 

It is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long, barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the wind--and yet it's keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky. Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it's their time too--nothing says they aren't to make something of it. As for Jenny Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin' to tell us somethin', but that's just it, she couldn't even if she wanted to--dumb bird. But the others--and they in some way must know too--it would never occur to them to want to, even if they could take the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east of the sun and west of the moon. So their comment is: "No comment." Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.

saturday

i'd spent all day working at the cafe down the street. when i got up the guy sitting next to me said "you beat me." (he had spent the majority of our shared table time adjusting the color saturation on a photograph of a barbed-wire fence, which he ultimately uploaded as his facebook cover photo.) i said "yup" and walked out into the street. i had ambitions for the night. i was going to find a cheap bottle of wine and a watermelon.

as it turns out, bodegas only sell beer and 'california wine product', so i had to find a liquor store. henry's sounded like a good name when it came up on google search, but when i got there it was a high-end wine shop -- the kind with little rope-and-paper handwritten price tags hanging on the necks of each bottle, ideal for a future life in which i have a source of income. i ended up leaving with a bottle of romanian (yes romanian) pinot - at $9 it was the cheapest bottle in the store. there were no watermelons at any of the grocery shops i passed on the way home.

we took the fire escape to get up to the roof. in the backyard of the building there was a bonfire barbeque going on, which seemed very adult in comparison to our bottle of undated wine and apple sauce cups. from so high up i couldn't tell if they were 20-somethings or 40-somethings. either way we waved and they waved back.

sitting on top of the roof with our backs against the curved rim we couldn't see much of a sunset. it was a gentle one and the sky never went completely dark. we don't have a view of the skyline, we have a view of queens. the tip of a church, a square of green, other people's windows. but there were fireworks, twice in an hour. i figure from high up enough in the world you could see fireworks every night. i scooped into a packet of apple sauce and leaned my head back. no stars. wait - two stars. no, one's an airplane. they're both airplanes. finally it got cold and we scuttled down the ladder and make a frozen pizza in the microwave. it's meant to be oven-baked for 25 minutes but the knob on the oven is broken off so we stuck it in the microwave for 3 minutes and it came out perfect. a handy trick. we discussed the comparative dangers of coffee and cocaine and coach salaries and television sexism. we listened to jake bugg.

i get my fix of stars later, while i'm laying in bed, squinting through my newsfeed with my contacts out. a video comes up: a 3d rendering of a hubble photograph. there are billions of galaxies. the narrator says the human mind can't grasp what that means. falling asleep i think about how there are billions of humans, too. we can't completely fathom what that means, either, but living in the city helps.