Frank O'Hara:

Death

1

If half of me is skewered

by grey crested birds

in the middle of the vines of my promise

and the very fact that I'm a poet

suffers my eyes

to be filled with vermillion tears,

2

how much greater danger

from occasion and pain is my vitality

yielding, like a tree on fire!-

for every day is another view

of the tentative past

grown secure in its foundry of shimmering

that's not even historical; it's just me.

3

And the other half

of me where I master the root

of my everyday idiosyncrasy

and fit my ribs like a glove,

4

is that me who accepts betrayal

in the abstract as if it were insight?

and draws it knuckles

across the much-lined eyes

in the most knowing manner of our time?

5

The wind that smiles through the wires

isn't vague enough for an assertion

of a personal nature, it's not for me,

6

I'm not dead. Nothing remains, let alone "to be said,"

except that when I fall backwards

I am trying something new and shall succeed, as in the past.

[I Kiss Your Cup]

I kiss your cup

which will not be used again

till you come back

Loud as a swan's transport

is your voice

amplified by the distance in your eyes

Snow of thought

I am on my back to you

and my lids twitch

I dreamt

that I was mysteriously murdered

with narcotics

And the dust

that makes a Rubens out of you

makes me a serpent

A Hill

Yes, it's disgusting

when you lose

control, but my

wilderness is love

of a kind, no?

And the purity

of my confusion is

there, it's poetry

in love with you

along with me,

both of us love you

in the same "My!"

Yes, but don't be

scared; poetry

is intangible and

there's no purity

in me

outside of love,

which you can easily wreck

and I can lose.

Clouds pass in

my notorious eye

but you, through

all, I see.