More Irrelevant and Less True

Someone suggested Ashbery
Rendered Coleridge’s dictum.
There’s a tempest reading tea leaves!

But oh, to be irrelevant
In winter, not only to those
Absorbed in scattered poetries,

But to everyone—the bankers
Who find even the smallest sums
Relevant as hawks find rodents—

The employers who want the truth
Of how every minute is spent—
The righteous who reserve the right

To define what is righteousness—
The militant for whom the choice
Of costume’s always relevant—

Everyone. To be less and less
Relevant and true. To become
This chest of words in disorder.