anodetoashbery

He said nothing. For a man of so many words
Nothing wasn't much to say
And what's more it wasn't kind of him
To say so much before he said nothing to me.
He looked at things very clearly. It seems
Everyone becomes a word in a marvelously crafted line
Of a future poem. One's (that is, not his) words
Silent, distracting, extraneous,
Have that pesky way of over-narrating, nauseating.
Each pause, to him, precious (or so
I would be so bold as to conjecture)
Without hearing him explain even his words,
Much less his silences. But that's where the "Beauty" is--
In what he doesn't say, his poems whisper;
What his eyes speak from behind a noisy skull
That is probably so virile with voices competing for eachother
That one's humdrum claptrap blather
Tips his threshhold charts of tolerance like children under rugs do
So that a response would make him really loose it.
Looking back on it for the inestimable time now
I figure it was better that way
Because if he did speak, rather than just glare
With eyes involuntarily popping out signs (like "Deer X-ing" and "STOP"--
Of course someone like this can't help such things)
I wouldn't have understood at all; couldn't have in his own complicated context,
Couldn't have gone back to his books the same way
And how to respond? I would have lost it, what little left.
Many a man's value lies solely in his (closed) mouth,
And my esteem of him extends
Only as far as it extends
In the context of me, a chair or toilet, his books, and our mutual quiet.

--Gennarose "Shameless Self-Promotion" Pope

HOME