They Dream
after Ashbery
They dream only of what was
Pillorying exactly the least essential
The most abortive thing to be stockpiled
In the catalogue of honorific forms
They dream only of lesions grown in the throat
As if one had swallowed a Braille iteration
Of The Epic of Gilgamesh with notes for Hungarian speakers
None of whom dream wickedness in Italian
They dream only of the hallowed
The bumpy & heuristically forlorn
Even as they dream of wearing gabardine suits
& Scaling flashily the girders of the Zilwaukee Bridge
Which tremble with new awareness every time we touch them
As we drink lemonade & lurch at the ballyhoo
Of my & everybody’s ramshackle façade
Toward which we dream rampant, ancient speakers, stereo or otherwise
Though we are poor, & our own dreams are often of the dead, or nearly dying
Who refurbish America with their long-lost cries, their ancient selves
Which cannot be heard, although the dead are already here
Faint as a manuscript of bones, until the trees go missing
—Mark DuCharme
published in Colorado Review 46.1 (Spring, 2019)
