This Economy In all my years as a pedestrian serving juice to guests, it never occurred to me thoughtfully to imagine how a radish feels. She merely arrived. Half-turning in the demented twilight, one feels a sour empathy with all that went before. That, needless to say, was how we elaborated ourselves staggering across tracts: Somewhere in America there is a naked person. Somewhere in America adoring legions blush in the sunset, crimson madder, and madder still. Somewhere in America someone is trying to figure out how to pay for this, bouncing a ball off a wooden strut. Somewhere in America the lonely enchanted eye each other on a bus. It goes down Woodrow Wilson Avenue. Somewhere in America it says you must die, you know too much.
– John Ashbery (American poet, 1927-2017)
