until only infinity remained of beauty John Ashbery More Quotes by John Ashbery More Quotes From John Ashbery The evening light was like honey in the trees When you left me and walked to the end of the street Where the sunset abruptly ended. The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself To the fragile forget-me-not flower. You climbed aboard. Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones, Dreams I had, including suicide, Puff out the hot-air balloon now. It is bursting, it is about to burst John Ashbery flower suicide dream The term ignorant is indeed perhaps an overstatement, implying as it does that something is known somewhere, whereas in reality we are not even sure of this: we in fact cannot aver with any degree of certainty that we are ignorant. Yet this is not so bad; we have at any rate kept our open-mindedness -- that, at least, we may be sure that we have -- and are not in any danger, or so it seems, of freezing into the pious attitudes of those true spiritual bigots whose faces are turned toward eternity and who therefore can see nothing. John Ashbery spiritual attitude reality I want a bedroom near the sky, an astrologer's cave John Ashbery astrology fashion sky Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about. John Ashbery fire home people I lost my ridiculous accent without acquiring another John Ashbery ridiculous speech lost Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea— John Ashbery enough rooms ideas I often wonder if I am suffering from some mental dysfunction because of how weird and baffling my poetry seems to so many people and sometimes to me too. John Ashbery dysfunction suffering people So I cradle this average violin that knows John Ashbery music average dull Alone with our madness and favorite flower John Ashbery flower writing love If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one's actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts. John Ashbery vitality plot numbers We might realize that the present moment may be one of an eternal or sempiternal series of moments, all of which will resemble it because, in some ways, they are the present, and won't in other ways, because the present will be the past by that time. John Ashbery may might past The ellipse is as aimless as that, John Ashbery flexing return life Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up John Ashbery horse music past The sun fades like the spreading John Ashbery twilight inspirational life Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat. John Ashbery rain inspirational life Extreme patience and persistence are required, John Ashbery growing-up patience life Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all. John Ashbery poetry doubt art Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven't fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking. John Ashbery horse trust disappointment One can lose a good idea by not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asides it knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiations are terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and does recognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier. John Ashbery grateful writing ideas We are prisoners of the world's demented sink. John Ashbery memories life years