Atocha Choo-Choo

(for John Ashbery)

The pie here doesn’t taste
As though it were meant
To be eaten nor can I

Sir keep from the simple sweetness

Of seeming to mean
Something, the cheap
Shot of the easy

Deposit of block
A into slot
A, even as our train eases

Out of the station in a series

Of muffled collisions
Not so much discontinuous
As exhibiting a continuity

Apprehensible only to brake-
And signalmen, to whom
I might liken myself

At least insofar as I

Relates to U,
I.e., those signs above the two
Tracks between which we

Must soon choose.
Choose! Choose!

The astonishing shoes not of

Spanish but

Chinese women zip by our window
Suggesting several possibilities.
To wit, 1) None