John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

D

	But is the egg suggesting the quietness
	Of its forms. And sleep is beams
	For its {patronizing} dome.unshucked     "Oh shucks!"
	Skaters'Waltz
	The Waldteufel disc is volume, geometrical beauty
	Its slabs cannot keep up with the hungering into breath
	And final dreams.

	But XXXX                But an architecture
	But an architecture Made like us of rain commands a view
	Of its plain, steered away, Parnassus viewed through a windshieldXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX harmonious like the sea or the tops of trees.
	But when you get closer its sadness is small and appreciable.

	Also the feeling of being lived, looking for people,
	And the gradual peace and relaxation
	That boils down, through rings of cold and fatigue
	Smearing much of the day into fatigue fear
	At finding you not in, bloody from beating doors in
	And incomprehensible.

	And mouth of sea applied to your case
	Forever at odds with, and yet draining.
	Triggered to a partial coneXXXX zone of understanding
	Of the myths of fading daylightXXXXX (Six o'clock again.)
	Time     The birds
	one           double.
	The sea, each time, has no rhyme.
	It can be held in your hand.
	All this must go into a letter:
	At once the kindness and friendly clause

	Beating, turbulent on the stalls of death.
	The roofs quickly returned what you had
	Thought of them before. Day with a violet awl,
Or	A chisel, in that land of dust and dreams.

	But tThere is no personal involvement: leaves of the gingko tree
	Mad a frame for the photo. A woman advances out of the thicket woods
	Holding a book, for which her hand is too small, and whose title
	Although printed in large letters, cannot be distinguished.

	That is all, except a spot of white or black in the bottom corner
	Like phantom poodles, and a jagged row of gray at the top,             violet
Melting	Extending a little down one side,;and she is slightly turned inside her dress.
	As watching at something
	The color of death promulgated to the rank of blossoms

	Is drawing breath again for fear
	And its implements, and would enter the transparent years of life
	Which is carelessness, is
	Mind drifted from its triple cannon, to the starting line.