John Ashbery

In a Wonderful Place


A piece of one held out --
of useful packaging
and other tales
of men beyond the sunset, foreheads slumped

in a strange appreciation.
Others, still at school, charily accepted
the premise that lay outside.
Poems, dream-dipped,

accosted certainty at fixed points along the way:
the land of No Can Do.

I spent years exhausting my good works
on the public, all for seconds.
Time to shut down colored alphabets'
flutter in the fresh breeze of autumn.  It
draws like a rout.  Or a treat.



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