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
***
