John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

The Chalet

		It must have been the pure arrangement
		To breathe on the indescribable
		On the left of hydrangeas.
		She placed a leaf beside the dawn.

		The timid path leading up to the stable
		(That bitch... in the dawn)
		And happily you remove white bands.
		The face is still all there,

		And turn to the mahoghany calendar
		In which an ember is fixed.
		It must have been you big genseng palace
		From where rotten breakers rise

		Staying out of this port.
		You carried a leaf on at your head
		To place beside dim bells and smoke
		That day in 1934

		The explanations
		In the severe heart of drowned
		Where a scrubwoman slept. Diamond
		Marching over the trees

		To see if not some relief
		Brought into the football town
		The first parishioners walking
		Dawn over the business platform

		She placed beside the electric bell
		A cranberry-colored leaf.
		Because of the season.
		That day did not went away.

*   *   *

		Behind blue bottles in the hospital behind the factory I too often
		laugh, think, or smile, take up pencil to write on tennis ball the
		purest that you despising erupt into my solitude--the portion of me
		which is always breaking.

		The perfumed zither clanged      a door opened    a fox
		chased down the street   What is that up on the mountain     They
		say the whole town is burning

2

	So in spring with my softball on vast plain with the drip drip drip
	The door opened white fire and hand with the melting black letters I
	did not get the job