Lucid Obscurity

[rejectomorph]

The sky appeared stormy, moonlit cloud banked, but no storm came. I daydreamed by night, memories of afternoons like dust motes drifting in a shaft of sunlight bisecting a room. The room I couldn't find. It seemed as though I wandered ages these corridors leading nowhere until I commanded a doorway to reveal a sunlit garden. Lingering there, I caught a diaphanous fragrance, as the scent of some unseen flower lurking in deep green shade. How much time passed, I don't know, but returning to myself, I saw the waning moon washing the stars from a clear, cold sky. I withdrew to my real house to ponder the mystery of imagination.

I have been in a very John Ashbery mood of late, so that's what you get today. This brief piece is so like the work of Pierre Reverdy that I almost think it could be a translation miss-attributed by an editors error.

I MIGHT HAVE SEEN IT

by John Ashbery


The person who makes a long distance phone call
Is talking into the open receiver at the other end
The mysterious discourse also emerges as pointed
In his ear there are no people in the room listening

As the curtain bells out majestically in front of the starlight
To whisper the words This has already happened
And the footfalls on the stair turn out to be real
Those of your neighbor I mean the one who moved away

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