Poem by John Ashbery

A Pastoral

Perhaps no vice endears me to the showboat,
Whose license permeates our deep south.
The shows are simple, not yet easy, with handsome
And toy horns trying tried and true melodies.
Silently, that vice might speak from the shade:
“Your capers have misdirected all your animals.”
​
But, hating and laughing, risen with animals,
Who is denied admission to the showboat?
Nevertheless, because of tomorrow’s shade
The lad intends to file with the green deep south.
His ankles seek the temple melodies.
His mischief stirs the rocks and keeps them handsome.
​
Tomorrow, finding him less handsome,
They might side with the foreseeing of animals.
From the corral the melodies
Would start, teaching the showboat
(Thick is the tambour, oversold the deep south)
Which flowers to press back into the shade.
​
My affairs wrapped in shade,
Myself shall mobilize that handsome
Energetic enemy of the deep south.
Lately worms have pestered the animals.
Alarmed at our actions, a glittering showboat
Fled from the glade of supposed melodies.
​
And no more in our society living melodies
Break forth under the little or no shade.
The days are guarded. A miserable showboat
Plies back and forth between the handsome
Rocks, unwatched by animals
Whose glistening breath wakens forgetfulness of the deep south.
​
Truly the lesson of the deep south
Is how to avoid lingering beyond melodies
That cleave to the heart before it learns what animals
Strangers are. Knowing shade
Is their apology, let us never excuse handsome
Terror, the crook’d finger of a disappearing showboat.
​
The psalmist thought the deep south a wonderful showboat
And to the animals he met in the shade
Said, “You are my melodies, and you are handsome.”

1. He
2. Paradoxes and Oxymorons
3. The Hero
4. Abstentions
5. Mottled Tuesday

Walter Landor A Pastoral ("Damon was sitting in the grove")

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