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Poems Retrieved QUOTES

Poems Retrieved QUOTES

1 " Dear:

I am dying
without you, and I won’t be dying long. But don’t come.

Best always,
Frank "

― Frank O'Hara , Poems Retrieved

2 " Poem"

Suppose that grey tree, so nude
and desperate,
              began to waltz
 slowly in time to something we
are deaf to in the thickening snow.

Would it be merely trying to get
warm and true,
             as it seems one
does while dancing,
          or would this be
an invitation from the inanimate
world our bones,
            trying not to ache
with foreboding, seemed to warn us of
 in early childhood?

Then, unenlightened by desire and
satisfied by very real dreams, we
were able briefly,
        as from a window,
to look bravely upon the baroque will
of objects,
             not knowing, in our clever
smile,
    who really felt the cold.

Frank O'Hara, Poems Retrieved (City Lights Publishers; Reprint edition May 7, 2013) Originally published 1977. "

― Frank O'Hara , Poems Retrieved

3 " Episode"

Dear: The Letter

   The reason I loved you from the first moment we met is
because you seemed to hold a certain hostility towards me
which I mistook for wisdom. I thought you really knew me
instinctively, which is a laugh. But who's laughing?
   In the heyday of our exceptional excitement with each
other I think you thought I loved you blindly, but actually I
was just wondering whether you loved me or just saw through
me to yourself. That, of course, is nothing to be sneezed at.
I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy (enjoy! how cool I am!)
sex with you more than with anyone else in my whole life
so that it hardly seemed to be with anyone and became some-
thing else, like a successful American satellite, but the thought
of it doesn't exactly nourish me spiritually.
   Yes, it does. It would still keep me out of a monastery, if I
were invited to attend one.
   But this is a message, no time for thinking. The thinking's
been done. By you too, baby. I didn't just make this all up.
So now that you feel serious and responsible again, what do
you propose to do about it? I'm not putting any return address
on this, and it's being mailed by a "friend" so don't count on the
postmark. I know you don't love me still, I'm not so vain, I just
know that you'll be mightily intrigued. And you are one of the
few living mortals of whom the word "mightily" indicates a
quality. You see, even now, I am never ironic.
   Well, I don't want to sound like a French moralist. I am dying
without you, and I won't be dying long. But don't come.

                                                    Best always,

                                                                 Frank "

― Frank O'Hara , Poems Retrieved