John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

II-C

	Old heavens, you used to tweak us above us
	Standing like rain whenever a salvo... Old heavens
	You lying there above the old, but not ruined, fort,
	Can you hear, there, what I am saying?

	For it is you I am parodying
	Your invisible denials. And the almost correct impressions
	Corroborated by newsprint, which is so fine.
	I call to you there, but I do not think that you will answer me.

	For I am condemned to drum my fingers
	On the closed lid of this piano, this tedious planet, earth
	As it winks to you through the aspiring, growing distances
	A last spark before the night.

	There was much to be said in favor of storms
	But you seem to have abandoned them in favor of endless light.
	I cannot say that I think the change much of an improvement.
	There is something half-fearful in these summer nights that go on forever...

	We are nearing the Moorish coast, I think, in a bateau
	I wonder if I will have any friends there
	Whether the future will be kinder to me than the past, for example,
	And am all set to be put out, finding it is notXXXXXX to be not.

	Still, I am prepared for this voyage, and for anything else you may care to mention
	Not that I am not afraid, but there is very little time left
	You have probably made travel arrangements, and know the feeling.
	Suddenly, one morning, the little train arrives in the station, but oh, so big,

	It is! Much bigger and much faster than anyone told you.
	A bewhiskered student in an old baggy over coat much too big for him is waiting to take it.
	"Why do you want to go there" they all say. It is better in the other direction
	And so it is. There people are free, at any rate. But where you are going nobody is.

	Still there are parks and libraries to be visited "la Bibliotheque Municipale"
	Hotel reservations and all that rot. Old American films dubbed into the foreign language
	Coffee and whiskey and cigar stubs butts. Nobody minds. And rain on the bristly wool of your topcoat.
	I realize now that I never knew why I wanted to come.

	Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic.
	Its sailboats are perhaps more beautiful than these, these I am leaning against,
	Spangled with diamonds and orange and purple stains             life
	Bearing me once again in quest of the unknown. These sails are like itself to me.

	I heard a girl say this once, and cried, and brought her fresh fruit and fishes,
	Olives and golden baked loaves. She dried her tears and thanked me.
	Now we are both setting sail into the purplish evening.
	I love it! This cruise can never last long enough for me.

	But once more, office desks, radiators--No! That is behind me.
	No more dullness, only movies and love and s XX laughter, sex and fun.
	The ticket seller is blowing isXX his little horn--hurry before the window slams down
	The train we are getting onto is a boat train, and the boats are really boats this time.