John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

II-E

	Pulling, tugging us along with them, by means of streamers
	Golden and silver confetti. Smiling, we laugh and sing with the revelers
	But are not quite certain that we want to go--the dock is so sunny and warm
	That majestic ship will pull up anchor who knows where?

	And full of laughter and tears, we sidle once again with the other passengers
	The ground is heaving underfoot. Is it the ship? It could be the dock...
	And with a great whoosh all the sails go up... Hideous black smoke belches forth from the funnels
	Staining the gold carnival costumes with the gaiety of its jet-black soot
	Smudging

	And, as into a tunnel the voyage starts
	Only, as I said, to be continued. The eyes of those left standing on the dockare wet
	But ours are dry. Into the secretive, vaprous night with all of us!
	Into the unknown, the unknown that loves us, the great unknown!

	So man nightly
	Sparingly descends

	The birches and the hay         all of him
	Pruned, erect for vital contact. As the separate mists of day slip
	Uncomplainingly into the atmosphere. Loving you? The question sinks into

	That mazy business
	About writing or to have read it in some book
	To silently move away. At Gonnosfanadiga the pumps
	Working, argent in the thickening sunset, like boys' shoulders

	And you return to the question as to a calendar of November
	Again and again consulting the surface of that enormous affair
	I think not to have loved you          but the music
	Petting the enameled             slow-imagined stars
hornpipe?
fireworks?	A concert of dissatisfaction whereby            gutter and dust seep
	To engross the slowXXXX mirrored image and its landscape.
	City in dirt, favorable mirth.