John Ashbery, Collected Poems 1991-2000, edited by Mark Ford, Chronology by Mark Ford & David Kermani (New York: Library of America, 2017):
Like America
People are buying store-dolls.
I wonder if that's forbidden too.
Does it mean one isn't to lead one's life?
Today, a day that makes very little sense,
like America
in clear disarray
everything's getting worse.
Besides, who are we not to endorse it?
And these shattered ornaments to truth
also grew up to me.
The sun and the ward
paused over a thousand times,
unable to explain the arch hat is daylight.
And the tribes that were before
this panicked band announced it was quitting
saw the crocuses too. They were purple and awful.
It's almost leaking to say it.
But how much longer could I go on not missing the point?
Id. at 580.
Karin Roffman, The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life (New York Farrar, Straus Giroux, 2017).
