Patsy Southgate, Bill Berkson, John Ashbery, and Frank O’Hara in O’Hara’s loft, 1964.
photograph by Mario Schifano
POEM ...from Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara
I watched an armory combing its bronze bricks
and the sky there where glistening rails of milk.
Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back?
Now mounting the steps
I enter my new home full
of grey radiators and glass
ashtrays full of wool.
Against the winter I must get a samovar
embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos
to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind,
a little bit of the blue
summer air will come back
as the steam chuckles in
the monster's steamy attack
and I'll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears. I don't suppose I'll ever get
to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least.
My new home will be full
of wood, roots and the like,
while i pace in a turtleneck
sweater, repairing my bike.
I watched the pallisades shivering in the snow
of my face, which had grown preternaturally pure.
Once I destroyed a man's idea of himself to have him.
If I'd had a samovar then
I'd have made him tea
and as hyacinths grow from
a pot he would love me
and my charming room of tea cosies full of dirt
which is why i must travel, to collect the leaves.
O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors
though it is cold and you
are made of fire and wood!
I lift your lid and mountains
return, that I am good.
The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped
on a seat and now is lying in the alley behind
the theater where my play is echoed by dying voices.
I am really a woodcarver
and my words are love
which willfully parades in
its room, refusing to move.
[1954]
