Forgotten Sex by John Ashbery

Forgotten Sex

They tore down the old movie palaces,

Ripped up streetcar tracks, widened avenues.

Lampposts, curbs with their trees vanished.

They knew, who came after,

A story of departing hands and affairs, that mostly

Went untold, unless someone who was there once

Visited the old neighborhood, and then

They would tell about it, the space

Of an afternoon, how it happened in the afternoon

So that no record, no print of it could exist

For the steep times to come. And sure enough,

Even as the story ended its shadow vanished,

A twice-told tale not to be told again

Unless children one day dig up the past, in the attic

Or under brush in the back yard: “What’s this?”

And you have to tell them, will have to tell them then

That the enormous nature of things had a face

Once and feet like any human being, and one day

Broke out of the shell that had always been,

Changed its answers to lies, youthful ambition

To a quirk of the past, a fancy, of some

Antiquarian concern that this damaged day can never

Countenance if we want to live past the rope

Of noon, reach the bald summits by late afternoon.

Surely we are protected, surely someone thinks of us

Often enough to keep the stain from setting, surely

All of us are alike and know each other from earliest

Childhood, for better or for worse: surely we eat

Breakfast each day, and shit, and put the kettle on the stove

With much changing of the subject, much twisting the original

Premise back to the nature of the actual itch

Engulfing us, now. And when we come back

From an outing expect to find the furniture magically

Rearranged to accommodate revised, smaller projects

No one bothers to question, except polite Puss-in-Boots with what

Is in effect a new premise: “Try this one, the dust

Shows less on these rather sad colors; the time

To get started and gain time, however brief, over the neighbors

Quarreling into sunset, once you’ve convinced them you’re

Not playing and therefore not cheating. When the princess

Comes to see you on some perfectly plausible pretext, you’ll know

The underground stream that has never stood still is the surface

And the theater for all that is to come. Too bad the revisions

Will never be adopted, but how lucky for you, now,

The change of face. Good times follow bad.”

And the locket is still on the chain on a throat.

The askers, the doers, fall into silent confusion

As it comes time to stand up like a sheet of metal

In the blast of sunrise. I will do this, I can do no more.

I cannot think on the edge of a platform.

But the abandonment by love is a de facto sign

Of something else coming along,

Something similar in its measuredness:

Sweetness of things late, a memory for particulars

As lively as though they happened still. As indeed

They do sometimes, though like the transparent bricks

In a particular dream, they cannot always be seen.