I see three rabbits softly bound
Through a soundless garden without a sound.
The hunting owl, dividing the air,
Flies soundlessly with soundless care.
The hunter steps in the soundless mind.
Speech and warning and singing are kind.
See the sheep, who cannot say
Why it’s especially quiet today.
Mortality, with loud breath,
Chants this poem of airless death.
Ashbery’s dead, and no one knows
Where our pagan poet goes.
Andew Marvel, whom he quoted,
Would say, but none today is this devoted
To claim heaven as the place we go
From language and its place below.
He has no poetry anymore,
Word that makes the whole world poor.
So Ashbery wanders with a smirk
In the shades of his ambiguous work.