To John Ashbery by Frank O'Hara

To John Ashbery

I can’t believe there’s not

another world where we will sit

and read new poems to each other

high on a mountain in the wind.

You can be Tu Fu, I’ll be Po Chu-i

and the Monkey Lady’ll be in the moon,

smiling at our ill-fitting heads

as we watch snow settle on a twig.

Or shall we be really gone? this

is not the grass I saw in my youth!

and if the moon, when it rises

tonight, is empty —a bad sign,

meaning ‘You go, like the blossoms.’