Sleeping in the Corners of Our Lives

So the days went by and the nickname caught on.

It became a curiosity, but it wasn’t curious.

Afternoon leaves blew against the stale brick

Surface. Just an old castle. Enjoy it

While you’re here. And in looking for a more convenient

way

To save one’s soul, one is led up to it like a season,

And in looking all around, and about, its tome

Becomes legible in the interstices. A great biography

That is also a good autobiography, at the station;

A honeycomb of pages with listings

Of the tried and true, that radiates

Out into what is there, that averages up as wind,

And settles back into a tepid, modest

Chamber with its mouse-gray furniture, its redundant

pictures.

This is tall sleeping

To prepare you for the soup and the ruins

In giving the very special songs of the first meaning,

The ones incorporating the changes.

Sleeping in the Corners of our Lives

By John Ashbery