You mean in other ways that changed our lives?
Somethin' 'o that, I says.  Is that why clouds
withered scrappily and no tune finally approved
its margins?  Fringed with decay all along,
it was, and if who knew better than our selves' somber
asides they wouldn't bet on it.  But I was a
child here for a long time.  I even learned to read
by the glare from the mud factory, fumed
and hectored hostile witnesses, and so
sailed down with evening to be done with penances,
haphazard scraps of truth on beauty's trash heap.
I'd do it again in a moment, offered the chance,
but luck seldom cometh our way twice,
ye gods!  We serve two masters: haddock and bream,
while crumbs muster stingily at our lips.
It was a day like any other, torn from the register.

--from Recent History; John Ashbery (2012)