There is a geography which holds
its hands just so far from the breast
and pushes you away, crying so.
There were occasionally
rifts in the cloud where the face
of a woman appeared, frowning.
If I am ever to find these trees meaningful
I must have you by the hand. As it is, they
stretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky,
and the snow looks up like a face dirtied
with tears. Should I cry out and see what happens?
There could only be a stranger wandering
in this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himself
frozen fast in wintry eyes.
The stars fell
one by one into his eyes and burnt.
I loved her fright, which was against me
into the air! and the diamond white of her forelock
which seemed to smart with thoughts as my heart smarted
with life!
and she'd toss her head with the pain
and paw the air and champ the bit, as if I were Endymion
and she, moon-like, hated to love me.
and I have mastered the speed and strength which is the
armor of the world.
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
I admire you, beloved, for the trap you've set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.
I take this
for myself, and you take up
the thread of my life between your teeth,
tin thread and tarnished with abuse,
you shall still hear
as long as the beast in me maintains
its taciturn power to close my lids
in tears, and my loins move yet
in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds
you have left me alone in, and would be
the dolorous distraction from,
while you summon your army of anguishes
which is a million hooting blood vessels
on the eyes and in the ears
at that instant before death.
Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more
adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.
Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?
I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to.
Frank O'Hara« first previous
Page 3 of 6.
next last »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.