Instead of Losing
Anyone, growing up in a space you hadn't used yet would've done the same: bother the family's bickering to head straight into the channel. My, those times crackled near about us, from sickly melodrama instead of losing, and the odd confusion...confusion. I thought of it then, and in the mountains. During the day we perforated the eponymous city limits and then some. No one knew all about us but some knew plenty. It was time to leave that town for an empty drawer into which they sailed. Some of the eleven thousand virgins were getting queasy. I say, stop the ship! No can do. Here come the bald arbiters with their eyes on chains, just so, like glasses. Heck, it's only a muskrat that's seen better years, when things were medieval and gold... So you people in the front, leave. You see them. And you understand it all. It doesn't end, night's sorcery notwithstanding. Would you have preferred to be a grownup in earlier times than the child can contain or imagine? Or is right now the answer—you know, the radio we heard news on late at night, our checkered fortunes so pretty. Here's your ton of plumes, and your Red Seal Records. The whole embrace.
Credit
Copyright © 2011 by John Ashbery. All rights reserved. Used by arrangement with Georges Borchardt. Inc.
Date Published
01/01/2011