It's the month of May in my heart as the song
says and everything's perfect: a little too chilly
for April and the chestnut trees are refusing to bloom
as they should refuse if they don't want to, sky
clear and blue with a lot of side-paddle steamers
pushing through to Stockholm where the canals're true-blue
in my spacious quarters on the rue de l'Université
I give a cocktail in the bathroom, everyone gets wet
it's very beachy; and I clear my head staring at the sign
LOI DU 29 JUILLET 1881 **
so capitalizing on a few memories
from childhood by forgetting them, I'm happy as a finger
of Vermouth being poured over a slice of veal, it's
the new reality in the city of Balzac! praying to be let
into the cinema and become an influence, carried through
streets on the shoulders of Messrs Chabrol and Truffaut
towards Nice
or do you think that the Golden Lion
would taste pleasanter (not with vermouth, lion!) ?
no, but San Francisco, maybe, and abalone
there is
nothing in the world I wouldn't do foryouforyou (zip!)
and I go off to meet Mario and Marc at the Flore
** Introduced by the anti-monarchist,
anti-imperialist representative of
Montpellier in the Chamber of Deputies,
Eugène Lisbonne, a diligent opponent of
"the government of moral order," this Law
established the sweepingly broad freedom
of the press in France, embodying special
protection against loyalty oaths and oth-
er indignities against chestnut trees.
Frank O'Hara
Beer for Breakfast
Paris, April, 1960
Floating Bear, 1961
Donald Allen
editor
op. cit.
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