Where Shall I Wander

New Poems

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Poetry

by John Ashbery

Ecco Press

Due/Published March 2005, 96 pages, cloth

ISBN 0060765291

Ashbery's 23 collection.

You meant more than life to me. I lived
through you not knowing, not knowing I
was living.
I learned that you called for me. I came to
where you were living, up a stair. There
was no one there.
No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair. Many times to celebrate
we were called together and where
we had been there was nothing there,
nothing that is anywhere. We passed
obliquely,
leaving no stare. When the sun was done
muttering,
in an optimistic way, it was time to leave
that there.

-- from "The New Higher" -- from "The New Higher"