The Poetry of Frank O'Hara. Frank O'Hara

ooh! spare the men

       and their nervous companions that melt and ripen

       into a sordid harbor of squid-slipping tarpaulin strips,

       quits the sordid arbor of community butchers' girth

      The jumping error pins hate on the blossoms of baffles,

       desely foraging covered hero-Nero of Maltese, of Moor,

       leap, oh leap! agains the fame that's in the noose,

       sister of yearning, of eclogues without overcoats deeply,

       and the trumpet rages over the filigreed prisoners

      Now sallies forth the joyousness of being cruel

       which is singing of the world needed by the paralyzed wind,

       seated and rebeginning, mounting without saying adieu,

       never again delicately to entomb a tear,

       that mark of suffering in the toughness of the forest

      Lepers nest on the surly cats of glistening delirium,

       feet of fire drowning in the attitude of relinquishing foreheads

       remember always the barriers so cupiditously defended,

       no spume breezy enough for the tempestous sabers

       sent reeling into the charades of fears of the nubile

      A crisis questions its attendant in the eyelid of Verona

       so serious are the lassitudes of a heart turned into a choir

       and the fire-escapes tend to ferment against the paynim cheek

       of love that's advancing into a maelstrom for a true speech,

       succoring the lewd paupers deliberately, spear-like,

       the pearl hesitating to come near the arid well

      Noose arriving tropically masterfull, estimating and caught,

       let the crouching ferns release their nascent sonata

       and, shaking with a remunerations of flaccid countries,

       eat the rum that cruises and immortality non-sequitur finish,

       quiant, and having an aspirations as of torrents and cars

      Touched by the insensitivity that broods over the boats,

       oh halos of startling carpets, canoes and lathes! archers!

       a January of feeling seats itself before the young soldiers

       and laughs and laughs at those arch-guardians' radiance,

       particularly the sneer of fate, habit shaking its white fists

      2 Now for some hell, you make a few fast purchases separated by first nights of yoyo-carwheel-violences, ill but yelling and running full of the younger luminosity, soulful, oh and epic and sort of rouged between the shoulder blades! which the striding has not succeeded in making a gondola yet and this has so devastated the murmuring contributions of strangers in suits under the brilliant heather, although, my soul! it's white it's painted white as the rain! and have you not taught for clarity, for that sweet sake, the wordly dream of the son marching outward always? and whispering of sins in the green clouds

      An eagerness for the historical look of the mirror,

       the dry smile of knowledge which if faithlessness apologizing

       to the Sphinx, and is it not a great fury of horsemen

       who make a guided tour of the future and its glass-like tortures?

       the odor of evening vibrating across that linear nostalgia

       and vouchsafing a plume and volume of Plato,

       purblind water, the earth pitting its stench against the moon's

       and accomplishing a serenade, a terrestrial touchdown sigh

       in the silence which is not yet formidable or ominous,

       resenting the leaves and not yet gearde to the undercutting foam

      Poem in January

       Table of Contents

      March, the fierce! like a wind of garters

       it's calm kept secret, as if eaten!

       and sipped at the source tainted, taut.

      Vagrants, crushed by such effulgence,

       wrap their mild twigs and bruises in straws

       and touch themselves tightly, like buttered bess,

      for the sun is cold, there, as an eyeglass

       playing with its freshly running sinuses,

       swampy, and of a molasses sweetnes on the cheek.

      Turn, oh turn! your pure divining rod

       for the sake of infantile suns and their railing

       and storming at the deplorably pale cheeks

      and the hemlocks not yet hung up.

       Do we live in old, sane, sensible cries?

       The guards stand up and down like a waltz

      and its strains are stolen by fauns

       with their wounded feet nevertheless dashing

       away through the woods, for the iris! for autumn!

      Oh pure blue of a footstep, have you stolen

       March? and, with your cupiditous baton

       struck agog? do you feel that you have, blue?

      Ah, March! you have not decided whom you train.

       Or what traitors are waiting for you to be born,

       of March!

       or what it will mean in terms of diet.

      Take my clear big eyes into your heart, and then

       pump my clear big eyes through your bloodstream, and!

       stick my clear big eyes on your feet, it is cold,

      I am all over snowshoes and turning round

       and round. There's trail of blood through

       the wood and a few shreds of faun-colored hair.

      I am troubled as I salute the crocus.

       There shall be no more reclining on the powdered roads,

       your veins are using up the redness of the world.