John Ashbery's Poem "Train Rising Out of the Sea" Seen on the Subway: MTA Poetry in Motion

John Ashbery is one of America's most highly honored & revered poets.  Born in 1927, Ashbery died this past Sept.  He received nearly every major American award for poetry including a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, National Book Critics Circle Award and a Nat'l Book Award.  He was the Poet Laureate for NY from 2001-03.  Ashbery has the distinguishing honor of being the first English language poet to receive the Grand Prix de Biennales Int'l de Poesie.  A portion of Ashbery's stirring poem "Train Rising Out of the Sea" is a melodious, melancholy poem that feels written specifically for the masses of New York City dwellers who feel invisible and unmoored at times.  The poem resonates with a sense of being overwhelmed in a concrete jungle blocking out the beauty of a sunrise, sunset or summer breeze.  Ashbery said, "I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places."  I will chip away at his poem
                       "Train Rising Out of the Sea"  - with my own commentary.
Like an era that refuses to come to an end or be born again {when will the never ending construction with its scaffolding & cranes end?}
We need more night for the sky, more blue for the daylight {we can barely glimpse the sunsets & stars in the sky}
That inundates our remarks before we can make them {Overrun by rudeness}
Taking away a little bit of us each time {wearing down our very essence}
To be deposited elsewhere In the place of our involvement {struggling to find our way}
With the core that brought excessive flowering this year of enormous sunsets & big breezes {becoming obscured}
That left us feeling too simple {insignificant}
Like an island just off the shore, {NYC} one of many that no one notices, though it has a certain function though an abstract one. {an inexplicable pull}
Built to prevent you from being towed to shore.  {New Yorkers are resilient and unflappable}

Ashbery has said of his poems "The poem is sad because it wants to be yours and cannot be."  Poetry is an elusive diaphanous glow we can just barely begin to know.