John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

II-A

Part II

Pyrography. Running Amok. The West Wind.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Solitude '63. The Windward and Leeward Islands. Lines Written during a Period of Insanity. Loving You? Election Day. La Glu.XXXXXXX On a Separate Dying. The Sentimental Image. TheXXX A Fork in the Road. Poor People. His Own Invention. In Which All Ends Badly. The Chase. Iris Becomes a Mother Father. In Which All Ends Badly. An Invention: the Telephone. Waking and Felt there a Certain Rightness. A Well of Fire The Flame Fighters. A Well of Fire The Avalanche. But Sort of the Sleeves.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The New Job. The Bluff

Under the window marked "General Delivery"...

{	And didn't mind that being too warm like that, waking up to
	The new rules, exploited almost as soon as planted.} In this hutmentXXXXXXX
	Hutment or abode I'll invoke "mitred domes" and suchlike
	Awaking to this penitential psalm now
	That purgatory's ways have ended
	In sleep and satisfaction for each one.

	I have decided to write you this poem of misdemeanors
	This volume is geometrical beauty,
	Its slabs cannot keep up with the hungering into breath
	And final dreams

	But is [?] the egg suggesting the quietness
	Of its forms. And sleep is beams
	For its retracted dome.

	But, as we saw, sleep is all fours
	A beautifully written but inaccurate
	Directive charged with savage lisping
	A personal memento engraved in the sidewalk
	Tormenting the absolute future into lines of acceptance.
	Ready to dispatch the elegant part of this
	And all ears for the equation you remain on the sill:
	Nothing to be prepared for this sleep.

{	At once the kindness and friendly clause}
	And mouth of sea applied to your case
	Forever at odds with, and yet draining.

	This should be a letter telling you of changes
	At once the kindness and friendly clause
	Throwing you a minute to one side
	Of how this tossing looks harmonious from a distance
	Like sea or the tops of trees, and how
	Only when one gets closer is its sadness small and appreciable.
	It can be held in the hand