john ashbery riff in the title WHAT

Self-Portrait Without Convex Lenses


I emerged from the tunnels where trains spill air like warm
pneumatic animals,
out into the wind, a perpetual
surprise,
and in the square old women were singing
to protest the war

over the cafe and the travel agency
the clouds draw themselves in like fantastic skirts
when I lower my glasses they ease
like soft shoals the night-pocked sky,
the world illegible, with no edges,
and faces that pass
anonymous pouches of warm darkness