Written by
Frank O'Hara |
1
If half of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermilion tears
2
how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding like a tree on fire!--
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's not even historical;it's just me.
3
And the other half
of me where I master the root
of my every idiosyncrasy
and fit my ribs like a glove
4
is that me who accepts betrayal
in the abstract as if it were insight?
and draws its knuckles
across the much-lined eyes
in the most knowing manner of our time?
5
The wind that smiles through the wires
isn't vague enough for an assertion
of a personal nature it's not for me
6
I'm not dead.
Nothing remains let alone "to be said "
except that when I fall backwards
I am trying something new and shall succeed as in the past.
|
Written by
David Lehman |
Did you know that Evian spelled backwards is naive?
I myself was unaware of this fact until last Tuesday night
when John Ashbery, Marc Cohen, and Eugene Richie
gave a poetry reading and I introduced them
to an audience that already knew them,
and there were bottles of Evian at the table.
As air to the lungs of a drowning man was
a glass of this water to my dry lips.
I recommend it
to you, a lover of palindromes, who will also
be glad to learn that JA read us three "chapters"
of his new poem, "Girls on the Run," a twelve-
part saga inspired by girls' adventure stories, with
characters named Dimples and Tidbit plus Talkative and
Hopeful on loan from "Pilgrim's Progress.
"
As Frank O'Hara would have said, "it's the nuts.
"
The poets' books were on sale and afterwards
two of the poets signed theirs happily and the third
did so willingly and Joe took photos and I smiled
for the camera, shaking hands with people
I knew or didn't know and thinking how
blessed was the state of naivete
my naive belief in the glory of the word
|
Written by
David Lehman |
Come on in and stay a while
I'll photograph you emerging from the revolving door
like Frank O'Hara dating the muse of modern art
Talking about the big Pollock show is better
than going to it on a dismal Saturday afternoon
when my luncheon partner is either the author or the subject
of The Education of Henry Adams at a hard-to-get-
a-table-at restaurant on Cornelia Street
just what is chaos theory anyway
I'm not sure but it helps explain "Autumn Rhythm"
the closest thing to chaos without crossing the border
I think you should write that book on Eakins and also the one
on nineteenth century hats the higher the hat the sweller the toff
and together we will come up with Mondrian in the grid of Manhattan
Gerald Murphy's "Still Life with Wasp" and the best Caravaggio in the country
in Kansas City well it's been swell, see you in Cleveland April 23
The reason time goes faster as you grow older is that each day
is a tinier proportion of the totality of days in your life
|
Written by
Frank O'Hara |
He waits and it is not without
a great deal of trouble that he tickles
a nightingale with his guitar.
He would like to cry Andiamo!
but alas! no one has arrived
yet although the dew is perfect
for adieux.
How bitterly he beats
his hairy chest! because he is
a man sitting out an indignity.
The mean moon is like a nasty
little lemon above the ubiquitous
snivelling fir trees and if there's
a swan within a radius of
twelve square miles let's
throttle it.
We too are worried.
He is a man like us erect
in the cold dark night.
Silence
handles his guitar as clumsily
as a wet pair of dungarees.
The grass if full of snakespit.
He alone is hot admist the stars.
If no one is racing towards him
down intriguingly hung stairways
towards the firm lamp of his thighs
we are indeed in trouble sprawling
feet upwards to the sun our faces
growing smaller in the colossal dark.
|
Written by
Frank O'Hara |
The clouds ache bleakly
and when they can manage it
crush someone's head in
without a sound of anger.
This is a brutal mystery.
We meet in the streets
with our hands in our pockets
and snarl guiltily at each other
as if we had flayed a cloud
or two in our salad days.
Lots of things do blame us;
and in moments when I forget
how cruel we really should be
I often have to bite my tongue
to keep from being guilty.
|
Written by
Frank O'Hara |
I know so much
about things I accept
so much it's like
vomiting.
And I am
nourished by the
shabbiness of my
knowing so much
about others and what
they do and accepting
so much that I hate
as if I didn't know
what it is to me.
And what it is to
them I know and hate.
|
Written by
Frank O'Hara |
It's not so much
abstractions are available:
the lofty period of the mind
ending a sentence while the pain endures:
departures absences.
And you are still on the dock
the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows
At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George
Who is mopping the stage up
While two girls cry in the last row.
I think they got laid last night.
But who didn't? it was a spring night.
Probably George did too.
And now the ship has gone
beyond come sheets windows streets telephones and noises:
to where I cannot go
not even a long distance swimmer like myself.
|
Written by
Frank O'Hara |
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time
I don't prefer one "strain" to another
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie
not just a sleeper but also the big
over-produced first-run kind.
I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar.
And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!" all to the god! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time
do I? No I wear workshirts to the opera
often.
I want my feet to be bare
I want my face to be shaven and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart but
the better part of it my poetry is open.
|
Written by
David Lehman |
The sky was a midnight blue
velvet cloth draping
a birdcage and no moon
but the breeze was whistling
and the sound of a car
on Valentine Place was
the rush of a waterfall
on the phone in New York City
and that's when the muse
turned up with curly brown locks
she was a poet, too, and wanted
me to give her an assignment
she was willing to trade
fifteen minutes of inspiration
in return for a phone call
from Frank O'Hara in heaven
sipping espresso and Irish whiskey
and then a morning swim
we had so much energy those days
we needed to burn some up
before we could paint
|