The first typescript



[Page 50]


Ashbery: “The Skaters,” first typescript, page 50








It had been "damned" or dammed up:
 tipplingAfloat on its platform the [multiplying] reflector gave a little crydele
As your naked justicer hovered {over}dele

Like that marvelous thing you haven't learned yet.
All the air protrudes on your breathing theory
 that(You used to say everything breathed).dele

The fourteen-year-old mist is plumbed
By Plato in one of his books:dele
The wWoven story of his conical sandbox.dele

It seemed a bird was perched in the tree.dele
You had broken a small bone in your wrist
Extending your lives into a kind of penumbra.

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