and I’ll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears. […]
written by Frank O’ Hara, da Poem

we are all happy and young and toothless
it is the same as old age
the only thing to do is simply continue
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
blue light over the Bois de Boulogne it continues
the Seine continues
the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all
the Bar Américain continues to be French
de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus
Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb
and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think!)
and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes
and so do I (sometimes I think I’m “in love” with painting)
and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it
and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers
                                                                          and people under them
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything
                                                                        continues to be possible
René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn’t it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don’t believe it
written by Frank O’ Hara, ultima strofa di Adieu To Norman, Bon Jour To Joan And Jean-Paul

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton  
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun  
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets  
in Ghana are doing these days
                                                       I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)  
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life  
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine  
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do  
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or  
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and  
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue  
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and  
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is 
thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi 
and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go
back to work happy at the thought possibly so
written by Frank O’ Hara, da Personal Poem

how are you feeling in ancient September
I am feeling like a truck on a wet highway
how can you
you were made in the image of god 
I was not 
I was made in the image of a sissy truck-driver 
and Jean Dubuffet painting his cows 
“with a likeness burst in the memory" 
apart from love (don’t say it)
I am ashamed of my century 
for being so entertaining 
but I have to smile
written by Frank O’ Hara, ultima strofa di Naphta

I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me… . What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don't think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else… It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial.
written by Frank O’ Hara