John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

		I didn't mind her using my toothbrush to clean her
		typewriter keys. It was her replacing it in the
		toothbrush holder that got me.

	"No one has ever actually seen a badger." Zoos apparently never stock
	them. We had just spent an unrewarding morning at the Zurich zoo where we
	saw a small white rhinoceros and an enormousXXXXXXXXXX towering okapi. But the smaller rodents
	(is a badger a rodent) were disappointingly absent except for the hidden presence
	of rats.

	I hadn't minded though as I always like zoos, not because of the animals which
	are boring, as secretly and as strangely boring as though menagerie-alphabet books
	or the picture on a box of animal crackers. But because of the architecture and
	trees and something frank and witty about the smell.

	I was explaining about this to Patience, my girlfriend of that day, as we
	glided by tram along the ________strasse which commands an excellent view of
	the lake. Suddenly she let out an excited yelp which reminded me oddly of suggested the
	yaps of the morning's foxes of the morning.

"That's him!"

"How do you know?"

	"Because I always recognize these people that way. I know in advance that I'll
	know them when I see them, although I have no idea what they'll look like!"

"Ought we to get off the tram."

	"There's no rush. Anyway it's so cool and nice today I'd like to have lunch
	at the Drei Kronenhalle. It'll be nice in there."

	I assumed that the same law that had permitted Patience to recognize Mr.
	Badger (for such was the presumed identity of the man she had seen from the trolley) stranger)
	would also result in our meeting him later on. But I was beginning to worry a
	little about not being able to keep up with the demands of this job. I would never
	have recognized Mr. Badger. That was a little why we had spent the morning at the
	zoo, not that we expected him to look like a badger, but the idea that there might
	be some secretlyXX tie-up between him and the animal of that name which we could real- comprehend
	ize having looked at one. Secretly Really however we had known in advance that there would
	be no badgers in the zoo, and also that looking at a real badger was a useless and
	perhaps unnecessary bit of preparation. So going to the zoo was one of those

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	stet
	almost totally unrewarding tasks with which life abounds, and which we seem unable
	to escape through some secret reflex of laziness and bad mistaken for receptivity. It had begun
	produce its customary reaction of melancholy in me despite the pleasant trolley
	ride and the sunny, cool ambiguity of the day.

	My spirits began to revive a little though with the white wine we had for lunch,
	which also included some lovely pickled herring served on a piece of whitish ice.
	The herring, I was telling Patience, was a little like the leitmotif of the day
	since Badger had just dragged across our path like one. She didn't seem too
	interested though.