JA makes a starting cameo in this poem by April Bernard in the New York Review of Books.
Sithens in a Net
a poem
from a poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt
What we try to snag and hold fast
of laughter, wood smoke, but especially
the necessary ignoranceto go forward, to trust: I have netted
baubles from air bubbles, pictures of cozy
life in books, the way hot ciderby a warm stove completes winter
and sunset was sunset because you said
“Look at that!” to someone you loved.At a reading, John Ashbery was asked,
“But what was that about?” and he said,
“I guess I’m just sad about time,”and who can be sorry he was sad, when
such fabric lengths of poems came off
the loom, in down-home-and-I-guess baroque.Sometimes my dog turns, flops down,
and presses against me with a sigh that
fills the world with peace, makingpermanent what would otherwise fly away
on the lash of a clock’s tick. You have to think
about things in a different way, allowephemera to etch their brain-webs,
allow yourself to last as another beholds.
April Bernard’s sixth collection of poems, The World Behind the World, will be published in March. (November 2022)