{"id":115019,"date":"2017-09-06T11:01:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=115019"},"modified":"2017-09-06T10:04:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T14:04:17","slug":"soonest-mended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/06\/soonest-mended\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSoonest Mended\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/ashbery-1.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-115022\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/ashbery-1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"1111\" height=\"727\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>This week, in memory of our longtime contributor John Ashbery, we bring you a selection of his poems from our archive.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Soonest Mended<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Barely tolerated, living on the margin<br \/>\nIn our technological society, we were always having to be rescued<br \/>\nOn the brink of destruction, like heroines in <em>Orlando Furioso<\/em><br \/>\nBefore it was time to start all over again.<br \/>\nThere would be thunder in the bushes, a rustling of coils,<br \/>\nAnd Angelica, in the Ingres painting, was considering<br \/>\nThe colorful but small monster near her toe, as though wondering whether forgetting<br \/>\nThe whole thing might not, in the end, be the only solution.<br \/>\nAnd then there always came a time when<br \/>\nHappy Hooligan in his rusted green automobile<br \/>\nCame plowing down the course, just to make sure everything was O.K.,<br \/>\nOnly by that time we were in another chapter and confused<br \/>\nAbout how to receive this latest piece of information.<br \/>\n<em>Was<\/em> it information? Weren\u2019t we rather acting this out<br \/>\nFor someone else\u2019s benefit, thoughts in a mind<br \/>\nWith room enough and to spare for our little problems (so they began to seem),<br \/>\nOur daily quandary about food and the rent and bills to be paid?<br \/>\nTo reduce all this to a small variant,<br \/>\nTo step free at last, minuscule on the gigantic plateau\u2014<br \/>\nThis was our ambition: to be small and clear and free.<br \/>\nAlas, the summer\u2019s energy wanes quickly,<br \/>\nA moment and it is gone. And no longer<br \/>\nMay we make the necessary arrangements, simple as they are.<br \/>\nOur star was brighter perhaps when it had water in it.<br \/>\nNow there is no question even of that, but only<br \/>\nOf holding on to the hard earth so as not to get thrown off,<br \/>\nWith an occasional dream, a vision: a robin flies across<br \/>\nThe upper corner of the window, you brush your hair away<br \/>\nAnd cannot quite see, or a wound will flash<br \/>\nAgainst the sweet faces of the others, something like:<br \/>\nThis is what you wanted to hear, so why<br \/>\nDid you think of listening to something else? We are all talkers<br \/>\nIt is true, but underneath the talk lies<br \/>\nThe moving and not wanting to be moved, the loose<br \/>\nMeaning, untidy and simple like a threshing floor.<\/p>\n<p>These then were some hazards of the course,<br \/>\nYet though we knew the course <em>was<\/em> hazards and nothing else<br \/>\nIt was still a shock when, almost a quarter of a century later,<br \/>\nThe clarity of the rules dawned on you for the first time.<br \/>\nThey were the players, and we who had struggled at the game<br \/>\nWere merely spectators, though subject to its vicissitudes<br \/>\nAnd moving with it out of the tearful stadium, borne on shoulders, at last.<br \/>\nNight after night this message returns, repeated<br \/>\nIn the flickering bulbs of the sky, raised past us, taken away from us,<br \/>\nYet ours over and over until the end that is past truth,<br \/>\nThe being of our sentences, in the climate that fostered them,<br \/>\nNot ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes<br \/>\nTo be without, alone and desperate.<br \/>\nBut the fantasy makes it ours, a kind of fence-sitting<br \/>\nRaised to the level of an esthetic ideal. These were moments, years,<br \/>\nSolid with reality, faces, namable events, kisses, heroic acts,<br \/>\nBut like the friendly beginning of a geometrical progression<br \/>\nNot too reassuring, as though meaning could be cast aside some day<br \/>\nWhen it had been outgrown. Better, you said, to stay cowering<br \/>\nLike this in the early lessons, since the promise of learning<br \/>\nIs a delusion, and I agreed, adding that<br \/>\nTomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned,<br \/>\nThat the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint<br \/>\nNone of us ever graduates from college,<br \/>\nFor time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up<br \/>\nIs the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.<br \/>\nAnd you see, both of us were right, though nothing<br \/>\nHas somehow come to nothing: the avatars<br \/>\nOf our conforming to the rules and living<br \/>\nAround the home have made\u2014well, in a sense, \u201cgood citizens\u201d of us,<br \/>\nBrushing the teeth and all that, and learning to accept<br \/>\nThe charity of the hard moments as they are doled out,<br \/>\nFor this is action, this not being sure, this careless<br \/>\nPreparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,<br \/>\nMaking ready to forget, and always coming back<br \/>\nTo the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, in memory of our longtime contributor John Ashbery, we bring you a selection of his poems from our archive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5234,3539,165,30432],"class_list":["post-115019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-john-ashbery","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-soonest-mended"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Soonest Mended<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week, in memory of our longtime 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