Screen Test, 1965

after Andy Warhol

Four severe minutes. Every absent

color in the world coalesces

in the left hand of these frames—

a black half-veil. It is unsure

where the poet’s face survives

the shadow. The face

pivots left (its left)

and light holds a line

at the nose while darkness, wounded, eats

the cheek and much of the eye

socket—the gorged

right eye set free to lumber

its way off the face

into some ommetaphobe’s

blinded sleep. Ask now

if the art has consciousness.

I would shout yes if it wasn’t

Ashbery—the ‘65

model of that face he makes

where everything ‘cept those eyes

numbs into a mum abstraction.