John Ashbery

A Mood of Quiet Beauty

loss free verse haunting dreamlike

A Mood of Quiet Beauty - meaning Summary

Evening of Fractured Intimacy

The poem presents a domestic evening whose honeyed light and simple departure unfold into surreal, disjointed images. Familiar scenes—bridges, flowers, museums—become metaphors for fragile emotions and abrupt ruptures: dreams including suicide, a balloon about to burst. Quiet beauty coexists with understated disturbance, and memory, art, and breath blur together. The overall mood is one of fleeting intimacy and altered perception, where ordinary moments reveal deeper vulnerability.

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The evening light was like honey in the trees When you left me and walked to the end of the street Where the sunset abruptly ended. The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself To the fragile forget-me-not flower. You climbed aboard. Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones, Dreams I had, including suicide, Puff out the hot-air balloon now. It is bursting, it is about to burst With something invisible Just during the days. We hear, and sometimes learn, Pressing so close And fetch the blood down, and things like that. Museums then became generous, they live in our breath.

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