Flow Chart (excerpt)

And we have the right

to be confirmed, just as animals or even plants do, provided we go away and leave

every essential piece of the architecture of us behind. Surely then, what we work for must be met

with approval sometime even though we haven’t the right to issue any

such thing. There are caves and caves, and almost none

of them has been explored yet. That doesn’t give us much

to go on, yet we insistently cry that someone else’s rondo is already

being played, and that over and over, so how come nobody does anything about it,

relaxes us in our shoes and tells us about bedtime? Surely, in my younger

days people acted differently about it. There was no barnstorming, just quiet

people going about their business and not worrying too much about

being rewarded at the end when it came down to that. No, we were wandering

away, too busy for such things, toward the altar,

or better yet into the nave whose fruit-and-flower

decoration led unostentatiously and facilely into the outdoors it

anticipated. No use just sitting around juicing the lemon

or the orange for that matter as long as one was intending to get up and play

again.

— from Flow Chart (© 1991, 2017 Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)