Unpublished poems and fragments from the first typescript:
For the Left Hand
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One typescript page, letter format; dated “Jan. 5. 1962.” Verso: an address. Three correction campaigns: (1) black ink, (2) blue ball-point pen and (3) lead pencil. Several lines were subsequently incorporated into “The Skaters.” |
 Page 1, recto |
 Page 1, verso |
| For |  | |
| Written with the Left Hand | |
| Dropped in the snow, it had come apart | ||
| But was still shiny and new. A new camera. | ||
| The glass of nourishing whiskey fallen beside it, | ||
| Only a little spilled., Ggray on the snow. | | |
| The green chair some | | |
| Offered no repose, only a little discontinuity | | |
| In space, the mother of distance. | ||
| Only a note on the floor. The package of ^time, [ ^thing? | | |
| But only a sobbing--certain note-- | ||
| Breathes, in the transparent but deafening flood. Ok | |
| The parcels pin you to the door, | ||
| Liking to know how to get out of here, how to breathe. | | |
| In another sense it is quiet and beautiful. | ||
| Heads in hands, waterfall of simplicity-- | ||
| Your quaint grave, the highway strewn with tacks. ^[ cascading | |
| It is the property to be lifted again | ||
| Into the same place. The perishing | ||
| Thin ends are alive with rebuttal, fringe | | |
| In itself a clever context, and cold end. leave in "and" | | |
| To be gotten out of the shadow, a hole | ||
| To refuse the square hive | ||
| Out of autonomy , clearing From ? | | |
| The drum. The passage is ice. | | |
| The steps nothing more than wood splinters. [wind and ? | | |
| Loud device to inject | ||
| The confusion of stillness, ^ ^dominate air-fact.^to? ^extradite? | |
| John Ashbery | ||
| Jan. 5. 1962 |
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34 bis rue de Longchamp |
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