John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

And stooped to pick a tiny, yellow flower.

V-V

	You see, though you thought I was in love with you
	I actually gave you the worst mark on the test.

	Winter with its discouragement XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
	Shifts the scene   XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

His great-grandfather studied with d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum.

A sound of peeing interrupted by cornflowers

There is perfection in the feeling that I might have died.

	It is the property to be lifted again
	Alive with rebuttal
	In itself a clever context, and cold fringe
	To be gotten got out of the shadow, a hole.

	In the April rain, little to distinguish--
	The outline of the blockhouse
	Its steps nothing more than wood splinters.

	Peaches are darkening on the western wall
	Of Tee Hee Palace.
	The sun has rested there too long.

	Only a t XX sobbing--, certain note--
	Breathes, in the transparent, deafening flood.

	Only a little discontinuity
	In space, the mother of distance.

Extending your lives into a kind of penumbra.

The trout are circling under water--

	How cold and dismal is your hospital,
	How beautiful and silent the gray walls of that clinic!

	Past Masters of eloquence
	Glisten on the pages of your book
	Like mountains veiled by water or the sky.
	that
	You can disappear into the moment.

	You were happy in that prison
	Next to the sea where slow boats come and go
	By the land XXXXXXXXXXXX Or over the land, checkered with prosperity and strife.
	To know how to get out of There, how to breathe.
	In another sense it is quiet i  XX and beautiful

	Heads in hands, waterwfall of simplicity
	The delta of living in into everything
	Childhood, death and old age
	Are upon us