afternoon / On which we wore things and looked well". It is true that the "stars" (like "blue" and "name") refer back to the poem's opening, and you can extract a biography out of this which makes sense of the poem's title and typifies the way that we always do infer stories about neighbours we don't know. Perhaps they are getting married or having a baby (what else do such couples do?). You can admire a traditional kind of skilfulness in the multiple meanings of "outwore" and "looked well". What I like still better is Ashbery's awareness of ways in which we understand a stalk -- (a) the bit that isn't the essential thing itself (e.g. the stalk of an apple); (b) the bit that IS the essential thing itself, what a plant has instead of a mind or skeleton; (c) its conductivity, something that stuff passes through, like a lightning rod. But what I like best is that sentence in the middle, the place where you can dive repeatedly and be in rough contact, without quite knowing what it is, with the thing that happens.