John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

III-H G

	His  day is breaking over the eastern mountains, at least that's the way he tells it.
	Only the crater of becoming--a sealed consciousness--resists the profaning mess of the sun.
	You who automatically sneer at everything that comes along, except your own work, of course,
	Now feel the curious force of the invasion; its soldiers, all and some,

	A part of you the minute they appear. It is as though workmen in blue overalls
	Were constantly bringing on new props and taking others away: that is how you feel the drama going past you, powerless to act in it.
	To have it all be past! To wake suddenly on a hillside
	With a valley far below--the clouds--the kind that are flat on the bottom, with long tails,
	Roll away, leaving a plastron of ill feeling...
	As
	AndXXX in some bright environment daft
	Imaginary cohorts join the fray

	The cuisine of this place has driven me mad
	I shall have to run away--I been so long away from you--
	There is a cheaper figure, however, called "The Talking Hand."
	Quite a number of these make a good decorative frieze.

	You might try interspersing them with separate flowers--
	Peonies and violets are good to begin with--oh I know
	You don't want to hear the rest of it--Sardinia violets
	especially those from the region of Gonnosfanadiga, rapturously
	snatched from the surrounding slopes talk more about the storms inhabitants,
	charcteristics--loving to go out at night--etc.)
	--how the storm fiends lie in wait in mid-summer, athirst for calamity.
	When through soft air calling
	Distant day resounds to this cry: Postpone the evil! underlining
	The reply you feel sweating out a dream

	That the fragments are castrated, caught up in tunnels
	And spat out like commands. And the whole thing definitely turns on itself
	To return exactly to you.

	That is the penance you have already done;
	January, March, February. We are living toward a definition
	Of the peacefullest appetite, then you see
	Them standing around limp and hungry like adjacent clouds.

	Soon there is to be exchange of ideas and
	Far more beautiful handshake, under the coat of
	Weather is undecided right now.
	Postpone the explanation.
	The election is to be held tomorrow, under the trees.

	You felt the months keep coming up
	And it is December again,
	The snow outside. Or is it June full of sun
	And the prudent benefits of sun, but still the postman comes.
	The true meaning of some of his letters is slight--