Friday, November 28, 2014

Having a Coke With You by Frank O'Hara


Having a Coke With You

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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