Randall Jarell

Randall Jarrell

 

Well Water


What a girl called "the dailiness of life"

(Adding an errand to your errand.  Saying,

"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to

A means to a means to) is well water

Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.

The pump you pump the water from is rusty

And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel

A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny

Inexorable hours.  And yet sometimes

The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty

Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear

Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands

And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

John Ashbery

  The New Spirit (excerpt) I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave a...