John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

IV

The Stamp Album

	Though certain of my eyes'
	Final meeting with you: how we move through
	Certain events without fear or surprise
	I believe I shall write you (here a red bird breathes,
	A little red bleeds onto the page,
	The mildness does go on). The distant, purple

	Stamp album:'s my image of you.
	So many dried, torn, utterly uninteresting images you both conceal:
	Of work, play and piety; centennial expositions,
	Of the 75th anniversary of a state, or the founding of the Hungarian Communist Party
	I believe it is time we had a look at them.

	And so it is with a secret feeling of delight I realize I am
	All alone once again in the skittish darkness,
	Leaning toward the magnifying glass, or the tweezers, or the little glass of water.

	One seizes these moments 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. Thus it was, once, long ago         (an enthusiastic?)
	I oXXX In our former period, I turned to the dark and enchanted smile.
	These moments of "population"

	Of the night by the body are not wasted:
	The next day the body returns,

	A multitude of bodies, dressed in the costumes of many lands
	And holding a chain of freedom in their hands.

	The first few links are a theme the stamps never tire CCCCCCCCCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLL
	Of repeating. Take this Iranian track star, for instance, DKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKD
	Breaking theXXXXXXXXXXXX whose shattered the poisonous

	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 a part of me, even in my dreams.
	When I pick up some humble object
	From my desk, turning it between two fingers, carelessly
	It means you. In a moment the pane