Who did the crisis there?
—John Ashbery
There are many things
I shouldn’t say, but do
anyway.
That’s all well and good.
We can plea embarrass
ment.
I forget a lot of things I
was going to say. Some
times
some time after. Other
times mid-sentence. But
when I
catch myself at the top
saying something and
quick
as a flash I shut it up,
because I just can’t,
knowing
full well what I’d begun,
or what had erupted
nearly
forth during my mean
derings—well, maybe
the timing
was off, but it’s these
things, what gets stop
pered,
that I should soon as a
pinch get focused on so
that
whatever it was that I
couldn’t say then gets
clearly said.
