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“A Poem of Unrest” by John Ashbery 🇺🇸 (28 Jul 1927 – 3 Sep 2017)
Men duly understand the river of life,
misconstruing it, as it widens and its cities grow
dark and denser, always farther away.
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And of course that remote denseness suits
us, as lambs and clover might have
if things had been built to order differently.
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But since I don’t understand myself, only segments
of myself that misunderstand each other, there’s no
reason for you to want to, no way you could
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even if we both wanted it. Do those towers even exist?
We must look at it that way, along those lines
so the thought can erect itself, like plywood battlements.