Rainy days are best,

There is some permanence in the angle

That things make with the ground;

In not taking off after apologies.

The speedometer’s at sundown.

Even as they spoke the sun was beginning to disappear behind a cloud.

All right so it’s better to have vague outlines

But wrapped, tightly, around one’s mood

Of something like vengeful joy. And in the wood

It’s all the same too.

I think I liked you better when I seldom knew you.

But lovers are like hermits or cats: they

Don’t know when to come in, to stop

Breaking off twigs for dinner.

In the little station I waited for you

And shall, what with all the interest

I bear toward plans of yours and the future

Of stars it makes me thirsty

Just to go down on my knees looking

In the sawdust for joy.

June and the nippers will scarcely look our way.

And be bold then it’s then

This cloud imagines us and all that our story

Was ever going to be, and we catch up

To ourselves, but they are the selves of others.

And with it all the city starts to live

As a place where one can believe in moving

To a particular name and be there, and then

It’s more action falling back refreshed into death.

We can survive the storms, wearing us

Like rainbow hats, afraid to retrace steps

To the past that was only recently ours,

Afraid of finding a party there.

O in all your life were you ever teased

Like this, and it became your mind?

Where still some saunter on the bank in mixed

Plum shade and weary sun, resigned

To the installations on the opposite bank, we mix

Breathless greetings and tears and lately taste

The precious supplies.

John Ashbery

Riddle Me