We seem not to inhabit uninteresting
times, in one respect at least. As
our sailors have been abandoned to
legitimacy in their private conduct,
the drone has emerged as the wunder-
kind of lawless warmaking, infalli-
bly of one mind with authority, our
totem of unit cohesion, incarnate.
Will matrimony just hasten this re-
nascence of bitter, senseless venery,
and other compulsions of repression?
The jest rides only on coincidence -
is each constraint on the authority
state to be balanced by its escape,
denying us all breath of separation.
To take up where you left off!
Without a breath of separation
your new movement is begun.
The heart pulses on, developing
a future. You do not rest
your lips, your ears, your fingers.
The field is full of daisies
and the sun is shining greenly.
It is a musical development,
taxing and inspired, before
the old love has echoed away.
To the eager suggestion of a new
face. It will be a great movement!
begun warmly and without pause.
You have carried yourself to a new
world, put off the final applause.
Frank O'Hara
Donald Allen
editor
Poems Retrieved
Dedicated to Edwin Denby
Attacca
1956
City Lights, 2013©
René Burri
Sailors, Beirut
1962
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