What Is Poetry
by John Ashbery
What Is Poetry - John Ashbery
What Is Poetry
The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya? The snow
That came when we wanted it to snow?
Beautiful images? Trying to avoid
Ideas, as in this poem? But we
Go back to them as to a wife, leaving
The mistress we desire? Now they
Will have to believe it
As we believe it. In school
All the thought got combed out:
What was left was like a field.
Shut your eyes, and you can feel it for miles around.
Now open them on a thin vertical path.
It might give us – what? – some flowers soon?
from Selected Poems (Carcanet, 1998), © John Ashbery 1998, used by permission of the author.