Grand Abacus

Grand Abacus

Perhaps this valley too leads into the head of long-ago days.
What, if not its commercial and etiolated visage, could break through the meadow wires?
It placed a chair in the meadow and then went far away.
People come to visit in summer, they do not think about the head.
Soldiers come down to see the head. The stick hides from them.
The heavens say, "Here I am, boys and girls!"
The stick tries to hide in the noise. The leaves, happy, drift over the dusty meadow.
"I'd like to see it," someone said about the head, which has stopped pretending to be a town.
Look! A ghastly change has come over it. The ears fall off - they are laughing people.
The skin is perhaps children, they say, "We children," and are vague near the sea.
The eyes-Wait! What large raindrops!
The eyes-Wait, can't you see them pattering, in the meadow, like a dog?
The eyes are all glorious! And now the river comes to sweep away the last of us.
Who knew it, at the beginning of the day?It is best to travel like a comet, with the others, though one does not see them. How far that bridle flashed! "Hurry up, children!" The birds fly back, they say, "We were lying, We do not want to fly away." But it is already too late.
The children have vanished.

John Ashbery