THE OTHER TRADITION

John Ashbery

They all came, some wore sentiments  Emblazoned on T-shirts, proclaiming the lateness  Of the hour, and indeed the sun slanted its rays  Through branches of Norfolk Island pine as though  Politely clearing its throat, and all ideas settled  In a fizz of dust under trees when it's drizzling:  The endless games of Scrabble, the boosters,  The celebrated omelette au Cantal, and through it  The roar of time plunging unchecked through the sluices  Of the days, dragging every sexual moment of it  Past the lenses: the end of something.  Only then did you glance up from your book,  Unable to comprehend what had been taking place, or  Say what you had been reading.  More chairs  Were brought, and lamps were lit, but it tells  Nothing of how all this proceeded to materialize  Before you and the people waiting outside and in the next  Street, repeating its name over and over, until silence  Moved halfway up the darkened trunks,  And the meeting was called to order.  	                              I still remember  How they found you, after a dream, in your thimble hat,  Studious as a butterfly in a parking lot.  The road home was nicer then.  Dispersing, each of the  Troubadours had something to say about how charity  Had run its race and won, leaving you the ex-president  Of the event, and how, though many of those present  Had wished something to come of it, if only a distant  Wisp of smoke, yet none was so deceived as to hanker  After that cool non-being of just a few minutes before,  Now that the idea of a forest had clamped itself  Over the minutiae of the scene.  You found this  Charming, but turned your face fully toward night,  Speaking into it like a megaphone, not hearing  Or caring, although these still live and are generous  And all ways contained, allowed to come and go  Indefinitely in and out of the stockade  They have so much trouble remembering, when your forgetting  Rescues them at last, as a star absorbs the night.