Someone asked one of our zen teachers about "safety" and he replied that there is not such thing. I won't tell you his full response, but it brought to mind the concluding lines from Ashbery's "Pantoum"
Some blunt pretense to safety we have
eyes shining without mystery
for they must have motion
through the vague snow of many clay pipes
I've always been fascinated by this poem, the way it makes vagueness, bluntness, and the absence of mystery into something mysterious after all. A lesser poet would write "eyes shining with mystery." None of the lines give us anything graspable.
Nice summary of an effect that Ashbery produces often – how the vague, blunt, and plain becomes precise, subtle, and mysterious!
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