Floody-flow-flow

I find – don’t I? – further peregrinations in –
oh, say, John Ashbery – exceed capacity
for patience: here, that is, you see, proceeding
from the striptease of my temperament
and mind, I have to find, rebuild (again, again)
my private stations of the cross (damned rhyme
intruding on me all the time) – and there he goes,
un-bossed, regardless, irreligious, with his
wide blue eyes’ astonishment (his eyes are blue,

I have to think, don’t you?) – his childlike
to-and-fro-ing floody-flow-flow and complete
lack of admonishment to be or do one thing
or three or two – and hoo! – I can’t keep up
(can you?). He went to Harvard: Lordy! Wrote
his thesis on le maitre – Auden – who soon
lauded him with honor; once, I think, conferred
a poem prize on Mr. Ashbery – which, well,
let me not surmise that Mr. Auden maybe had

a crush or something: I digress, I guess, but
doesn’t Mr. Ashbery? (The things we get away
with.) Hell, if he does what they say he does,
don’t I (as well)? Here’s what I would do,
if I were he. Take a dip in Emily and then,
for reciprocity, repaying all my foggy swimming
in his sea, take a dip in me. (To-and-fro-ing
floody flow-flow.) Is any of whatever anybody’s
doing necessary? Let’s tend to think so.


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