John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

IV

The Stamp Album. From Pagoda Land. A Bird Brain. Youth and Shrubbery.

	I love staying in igh s XXXXXX at night
	To take down the stamp album
	Weeping over the dry holes
	And those where only a printed drawing of the stamp is
	Like this New Zealand number coated with poisonous
	Reptiles--what color could it be? Possibly
	A pale cabbage green
	Or this Hungarian one with two heads
	Of founders of the Communist party in pale blue
	With the eyebrows inked in in deeper blue