Just Walking Around by John Ashbery
I really like how this poem is narrated by one person, but with such intimacy into the mind of another person. I love the language of the “secret smudge in the back of your soul”. I feel very removed from both the speaker and the subject, but it’s interesting just to know that people I see, perhaps just once in passing, have entire sagas within their psyches, about which I will never know a single detail.
Just Walking Around
By John Ashbery
What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is no name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,
An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,
Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again
That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.
