John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

-20-

	There has, however, been this change, so complete as to be invisible:
	You might call it... "passion" might be a good word.
	I think we will call it that for easy reference. This room, now, for instance, is all black and white instead of blue.
	floating
	A few snowflakes are sinking XXXXXXX in the airshaft. Across the way
	The sun was sinking, casting gray
	Shadows on the front of the buildings.

	Lower your left shoulder.
	Stand still and do not see-saw with your body.

Any more golfing hints, Charlie?

	Plant your feet squarely. Grasp your club lightly but firmly in the hollow of your fingers.
	Slowly swing well back and complete your stroke well through, pushing to the very end.
	When putting, grasp the club firmly, swing back very slowly, and go well through with the stroke.

"All up and down de whole creation," like magic lantern slides projected on the wall of a cavern: castles, enchanted gardens, etc.

?

I am slowly coming round. But please don't ask for any news.

	The usual anagrams of moonlight--a story
	That subsides quietly into plain historical fact.
	You have chosen the customary images of youth, old age and death
	To keep harping on this traditional imagery. The reader

	Will not have been taken in.
	He will have managed to find out all about it, the way people do.
	The moonlight congress backs out then. And with a cry
	He throws the whole business into the flames: books, notes, pencil diagrams, everything.

	No, the only thing that interests him is day
	And its problems. Freiheit! Freiheit! To be out of these dusty cells once and for all
	Has been the dream of mankind since the beginning of the universe.

	His day is breaking over the eastern mountains, at least that's the way he tells it.
	Only the crater of becoming--a sealed consciousness--resists the profaning mass of the sun.
	You who automatically sneer at everything that comes along, except your own work, of course,
	Now feel the curious force of the invasion; its soldiers, all and some,