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So
we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping
our
mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a
glance!
The song of an old cow is not more full
of judgment
than the vapors which escape one's soul
when one is sick;
so I pull the shadows around me
like a puff
and crinkle my eyes as if at the most
exquisite moment
of a very long opera, and then
we are off!
without reproach and without hope that
our delicate feet
will touch the earth again, let
alone "very soon."
It is the law of my own voice I
shall investigate.
I start like ice, my finger to
my ear, my ear
to my heart, that proud cur at the
garbage can
in the rain. It's wonderful to admire
oneself
with complete candor, tallying up the merits
of each
of the latrines. 14th Street is drunken
and credulous,
53 rd tries to tremble but is too at
rest. The good
love a park and the inept a
railway station,
and there are the divine ones who
drag themselves up
and down the lengthening
shadow of an Abyssinian head
in the dust, trailing
their long elegant heels of hot air
crying to
confuse the brave "It's a summer day,
and I want to
be wanted more than anything else in the world."
Frank O'Hara
Read poems
about / on: sick,
summer,
rain,
song,
hope,
alone,
world
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Frank O'Hara
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Frank O'Hara
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