Monday, February 23, 2015

I start falling in love with this poem when I read " Beastly" the other day.


                                     

                                                 Having a Coke with You - Frank O’Hara

                       is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz,
                       Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
                       partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
                       partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt,
                       partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
                       partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
                       it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
                       as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
                       in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
                       between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 
and 

                       the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

                        you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look

                        at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

                        except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
                        which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
                        and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
                        just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
                        at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
                        and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
                        when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
                        or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
                        as the horse.

                        It seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience 

                        which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you
                        about it... 

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