John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

IV-B

	Will be ablaze with drops of rain
	Like theXXX tears in the eye of sad presidents
	On these endless rolls of cancelled stamps.
	In the forest of unknowledge, sedge
	Overtops the canyon of unprovedn reality
	And thought is drowned out by the roaring of the cascades of ignorance;

	That the proof of everything
	Really proves so little. With still the madness
	Of everything barking through the years.
	Perhaps sleep is only another thing, a piece of wood

You stopped to p XXXXXXXXXXXXX stooped to pick up years ago.

	Shortly after that the bird flew curiously away.
	Or crumb of moss, too tiny to be clearly distinguished.

The day was gloves.

	How far from the usual statement
	About time, ice--the weather itself had gone.

	I mean this: through the years
	You have approached an inventory.
	And it is now that tomorrow
	Is going to be the climax of your casual
	statement about yourself, begun
	So long ago in humility and false quietude.

	The sands are frantic
	In the hourglass. But there is time
	To change, to utterly destroy
	That too-familiar image
	Lurking in the glass
	Each morning, at the ege of the mirror.

	The thing is that your continuity
	Is never what is expected,
	Thus... In the end we have your
	Complete image just the same
	Just as the setting of a play never changes.
	We areXXXXXX The voyage has not yet begun.

	The train is still in the station.
	You only dreamed that it was in motion.
	So there is freedom to be moved
	Again. To slowly raise oneself
	Hand over hand, lifting one's entire weight
	By oneself. Forget there was ever