From “Robin Hood’s Barn”
You bad birds,
but God shall not punish you, you
shall be with us in heaven, though less
conscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we.
Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably,
but you are the fruit and jewels
of my arrangement: O be with me!
Forget stand-offishness, exact
bookkeeping of harsh terms! The banal
sun is about to creep across heaven on its
daily turn: don’t let it find us arguing
or worse, alone, each
having turned his back to the other,
alone in the wonderful solitude
of the new day. To be there
is not to know it, its outline
creeps up on you, and then it has fallen over you
like bedclothes of fog.
John Ashbery
