Affordable Variety
It is one thing for a child to kidnap a parent.
It is quite another for the parent to sit down with the child,
blocking the path and its favorite mosses.
Cathexis arrives early in a golden coach.
I see stuff perched around,
mazes stuck in mazes,
knot of grapes at the throat, the horizon.
And we couldn’t keep it coming.
That is so.
This is an invaded country.
Dawn will abdicate all your book.
Walking around will tell the important things:
discount ways, barrels of breakers,
days swept into being.
The child grew up as these things grew,
listened and was worried for the starched moments
dropped from the official record.We bought pants
and suits, the occasional gray shirt.
By week’s end all was silence and industry.
It is quite another for the parent to sit down with the child,
blocking the path and its favorite mosses.
Cathexis arrives early in a golden coach.
I see stuff perched around,
mazes stuck in mazes,
knot of grapes at the throat, the horizon.
And we couldn’t keep it coming.
That is so.
This is an invaded country.
Dawn will abdicate all your book.
Walking around will tell the important things:
discount ways, barrels of breakers,
days swept into being.
The child grew up as these things grew,
listened and was worried for the starched moments
dropped from the official record.We bought pants
and suits, the occasional gray shirt.
By week’s end all was silence and industry.
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"The Weather, For Example", "O Fortuna" and "Affordable Variety" from WHERE I SHALL WANDER by John Ashbery copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission of George Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author.
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