And now I cannot remember how I would  have had it.

              It  is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place.

        The place, of  movement & an order.

        The place of  old order.

        But the tail end of the movement is new.

        Driving us to say what we are thinking.

        It is so much  like a beach after all, where you stand 

 and think of going no further.

        And it is good when you get to no further.

        It is like a  reason that picks you up and places you where

 you always wanted to be.

        This far, it is  fair to be crossing, to have crossed.

        Then there is  no promise in the other.

        Here it is.

        Steel and air, a mottled presence,

        small panacea and lucky for us.

And then it got very cool.

                                -John Ashbery

Untitled Bridge Poem (1988)
Hotel Lautreamont
Copyright by John Ashbery.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of the author.
This poem appears on the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge,
Minneapolis, MN.