Suppose it were Friday lxiv: We accept

Got weather?

We have our first

Friday of another

year, and we have

not finished with

our kid rossignol

our tidepool T's.

      Who can toll the

      passionate educa-

      tion, the journey

      of stars through

      heaven? And there

      are restaurants

      still to mortify,

      English dogs to

      emulate, and mar-

      gin calls on san-

      ity from Washing-

      ton.

    

The blank slate recommends 

itself, a stirring pagina-

tion in the sequence of its

buttons. Changing weather

only renews the welcome to

respond; we have Friday,

constant in novation. This
is red mug, blue linen,
under development.

 

              

Antonio Vivaldi
Violin Concerto in E
  Third Movement, Allegro
Neville Marriner, ASMF
Decca, 1972©

iv   Clément Chabernaud for Cerruti

v    Photography Valéry Lorenzo

Guys are feeling as if they should be at school

There'd be dormitories,

emptying, and bicycles

and cars dispersing to

the nearest water and

the quietest pier. All

over this land. Nobody'd

want to see another's

face, but nobody'd want

to lay his head anywhere

else tonight. With every-
thing else that will be
said of Gore Vidal, none
of us will forget the vir-
tuosity in pleasure and
its portrayal, that he
showed as the prize of
a passionate education.

How easily we could spell if we could follow,

Like thread looped through the eye of a needle,

The grooves of light. It resists. But we stay behind, among them,

The injured, the adored.

John Ashbery

Many Wagons Ago

  excerpt

  As We Know

Collected Poems

  1956 - 1987

op. cit.