The Academy of American Poets
Home | View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Ashbery
John Ashbery
John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He is the author of over twenty books of poetry, including Chinese Whispers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002); Your Name...
More >
Adopt a Poet | Add to Notebook | E-mail to Friend | Print
The New Higher  
by John Ashbery

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.

Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly
at the tag on the overcoat near the window where
the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now.
Now it was time to stumble anew,
blacking out when time came in the window.
There was not much of it left.
I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
Go presently you said. Go from my window.
I am in love with your window I cannot undermine
it, I said.




Copyright © 2005 John Ashbery
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2008 by The Academy of American Poets.