John Ashbery
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a
still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you
and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something;
that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented
Some comeliness, we are surrounded:
A
silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Place in a puzzling light, and
moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own
defense.
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