“We, we children, why our lives are circumscribed, circumferential;

Close, too close to the center, we are haunted by perimeters

And our lives seem to go in and out, in and out all the time,

As though yours were diagonal, vertical, shallow, chopped off

At the root like the voice of the famous gadfly: ‘Oh! Aho!’ it

Sits in the middle of the roadway. That’s it. Worry and brown desk

Stain it by infusion. There aren’t enough tags at the end,

And the grove is blind, blossoming, but we are too porous to hear it.

It’s like watching a movie of a nightmare, the many episodes

That defuse the thrust of what comes to us. The girl who juggled Indian clubs

Belongs again to the paper space that backs the black

Curtain, as though there were a reason to have paid for these seats.

Tomorrow you’ll be walking in a white park. Our interests

Are too close for us to see. There seems to be no

Necessity for it, yet in walking, we too, around, and all around

We’ll come to one, where the street crosses your name, and feet run up to it.”

— from Shadow Train (© 1981, 2008 Estate of John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt, Inc.)