Frank O’Hara, “Windows” … “we fall in love with the void”

A revisit… “Windows,” my favorite poem by Frank O’Hara, is not included in his collected poems. It didn’t surface until later – found by John Ashbery in a letter. The poem was included in American Poetry Review and O’Hara’s Poems Retrieved.

Frank O’Hara

“Windows”

This space so clear and blue
does not care what we put

into it         Airplanes disappear
in its breath and towers drown

Even our hearts leap up when
we fall in love with the void

the azure smile the back of a
woman’s head and takes wing

never to return         O my heart!
think of Leonardo who was born

embraced life with a total eye
and now is dead in monuments

There is no spring breeze to
soften the sky         In the street

no perfume stills the merciless
arc of the lace-edged skirt
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
***
 
 
 
 

~ by samofthetenthousandthings on August 21, 2018.