NYTimes's McGrath does Ashbery

And elsewhere, there are midnight forests, unlit fires, whistling winds, ebbing tides, skies ''cold and gray'' -- the whole romantic landscape seen in the flat, almost clinical light of hindsight. But the response is practical and accommodating, a recognition that things aren't as bad as they might have been; instead of full-fledged disaster there's just erosion and disappointment:

All hell didn't break loose, it was like a
rising psalm
materializing like snow on an unseen
mountain.
All that was underfoot was good, but lost.