John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

IV

The Stamp Album

	Though certain of my eyes
	Final meeting with you, the way we live through
	These silent periods without fear or surprise
	I believe I shall write you (here a red bird breathes,
	a little red ink bleeds onto the page; you see
	The mildness does go on) to tell you what your brother has done.

	Looking through some of my old poems
	To get inspiration for things to talk to you about
	I had lost track of the time. It was only
	With a secret feeling of delight
	I realized tho XXXX all those around me had long since gone to bed
	And I all alone in the eye of darkness.

	These moments, one catches
	As they come along, afraid to believe too much
	In the happiness that might result
	Or confide too much of one's love and fear, even in
	Oneself. It was thus that I turned to the dark
	As to a mirror, an enchanted smile.

	These moments of the "population"
	Of the night by the body are not wasted:
	The next day the body returns
	In costumes "of all nations" holding hands
	In a chain of freedom. And,
	As one might back a car into a garage
	I remained in my chair, steady with sleep, with the desire of sleep.

	I think sometimes the things you take up in your hands
	Mean all of you, and the proof of this
	Is that you are always part of me
	In my nearest dreams. In the forest of unknowledge,
	Sege overtopping the canyon of unproved reality
	Deeper thanm XX man's soul, and the tremendous sun, rising,

	That is the proof of everything
	And, in reality, proves so little. Why is it then,
	We are obliged to turn sideways
	Facing each other in the tremendous, but embraceable,
	Glare that subdues everything around us?
	This is space in which only we may stand.