Disguised Zenith
Disguised Zenith - meaning Summary
Meaning Slips Through Images
Ashbery's 'Disguised Zenith' tracks a speaker's uneasy meditation on meaning, loss, and perception. Fragmented images—wind, light, Pierrots, a jar—suggest fleeting possession and absence, where significance is retroactively imposed and suffering is questioned. The poem moves between ironic statements and intimate moments, ending on a small, unexplained clarity as the room brightens. Overall it explores how consciousness constructs meaning from fragmentary experience and how absence can shape knowing.
Read Complete Analyses“All to do, all over again, And if I had it…” Light fills a corner Of the room, not paying attention To the racing wind outside, the aching white powder. Yes, there are Pierrots and Pierrots, She resumed, but the wind makes maggots of us all, Flies on a wall, and there is no meaning but in suffering And where is the suffering in that? All the beautiful crafts, the tint choicer Than the rest, are available “at all times,” but We decode them backwards, Their meaning is for our meaning, and where Is the meaning in that? Like a long teatime, a stroll Downward over lawns, always more plumed And malicious. Did I have you There, that one time, And do I have you lost now, More steady, like a jar Marveling at its own emptiness, yet you shall taste it, A sea breeze one day glimpsed, Taken away, but you never knew you had it And so notice nothing strange, its absence Is perfect, and the room suddenly is lighter. It is really light in this fold. You know why.
from April Galleons (1987)
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