A recurring coincidence

Often I think 

of your voice against 

the needles of dawn

when the dampness was operatic 

in Ann Arbor lilacs

and the gold 

of my flesh 

had yet 

to be regimented 

in freckles.

Frank O'Hara

Commercial Variations

  [extract]

Donald Allen, editor

The Collected Poems

  of Frank O'Hara

op. cit.

I never despair of the loss of summer

Who can lose

what he

loves?

Weaving spiders, come not here iv

On Thursday evenings,

the Bohemian Club will

present entertainments

in the dining room. It

will be natural, to ap-

plaud or otherwise mark

one's delight. One ev-

ening, I clapped; and

from across the table,

a fellow barked, Those

are hands that have

never worked. Al-

though not uncon-

scionable in that 

precinct, friends did

exploit this outburst

unlimitedly in private,

and it is a jest that

follows me to this day.

I regard this portrait,

then, with curiosity -

The face is excellent.

The hands are coarse.

What went wrong?

I honestly have never

minded this silliness

behind the closed doors

of convivial subscrip-

tion. But I have dread-

ed and detested its

publication to an un-

knowing world since my

earliest youth. I have

known since the age of

6 or 7, that I would

need law, and that I

would need my own kind,

if more than one of us

existed.

Why don't we just send 400 redheads to Georgia

Gandhi'd have done it

in a New York minute.

Send them 400 redheads

and suborn 1200 liars 

to swear they were res-

ponsible for an entire 

season of homicides.

It would work.

OK OK, I'll do it - but I shall stand firm for the wainscotting

You know how tiresome even our best friends can be, when they know some-thing before we do. Ever since our giving up riding for mah jongg, they've been upon me to redo the tackroom - Bring it, Ingrid implores, at least to the 90s. Mm, I don't know that I'll go that far, but I do see the point of a D ring looped to one's Légion rosette, should a stray bridle surface on a South Wind. Then the lanyards from summer camp, nos-talgically adapted for coasters, could also be fetched into the renovation. And with the saddles, of course, we shall have belts for simply days. It's not as though the project were entirely silly ..

You'd think, I know, Why not auction off the saddles - a few of them, rather decent - for some equine charity? But the equine charities are into us all for enough as it is. Besides, one is somewhat sentimental about who rode where and how and when; and you know, it's just going to be some parvenu software guru who uses sharp practice to pay not a penny more than necessary to outbid our loyal farrier. I'd end up paying for them all again, you see; and one can never have too many belts these days. I can scarcely forgive myself for not making provision for chauffeur, who had to improvise with neckwear when the cleaners lost his uniform.

I think the renovation will afford us all some fun, but I have had to make it known, that upon Aunt Dinny's wainscotting I shall have to stand implacably firm. I happen to know that behind the 3rd and 5th panels from the bell tower window, she laid up her pre-war magnums of St Émilion; and the risk of their movement at this stately phase of their progress is quite insupportable, decanting excepted, of course. 

It's why I happened to accept the place, and certainly she was entitled to one's promise to adopt this house-hold tradition. Hence the chauffeur's new duties (even uncravated, now), are to guard this quaint corner of her quite merrily distributed cellar, pending bringing in those wicked paintergoddies of Ivan's, for a yummy trompe l'oeil from Puccini.


I do worry, but only a little, that someone is going to want me to re-do the floors. How shall I be able to confess, that I just did; and I know where my box of crayons is kept, 2nd plank in from the Cheval Blanc.




The gentlemen's apartments, too, must remain as they are. What was good enough for me, on summer visits to the dear and knowing lady who became my Aunt, is certainly fine enough to see me out. And how else, may I ask, should the succession to this pleasant patch of peace be settled, if not by the way it came to me?

Tonight, Georgia wants to kill a man, Texas killed another

What shall we

discuss this

evening,

my darlings?

Rooms? 

Neckties?

Waitresses 

who don't

know spoons?

I'd like 

to know.

I went to

Yale Law;

I went to

Stanford

Law.

No one

ever said

to me, what

I want to

know:

What

do I

say

to my

dog?

You know

spoons:

tell me,

please.

Charon, you know, is the satellite of Pluto

I was glad when they named this satellite, discovered only in 1978, for our oarsman to the next world. Its diameter is half of Pluto's, which I can well believe, with such constant deltoid work the very nature of its circuit. Imagine the responsibility, of being an only satellite. Solac-ing, to know he's up to it.

You will remember, I think, Banquo?

You know: the fellow the Macbeths had to dinner, unexpectedly, having observed the precaution of assassinating him that afternoon? The guy who braved the witches with his host, and whose heir would reign if steps were not taken? Before Coppola and Puzo, there was Shakespeare; and guys, already leaping into the plays because they must, will find they are always with them as they read their governance. But for me, Banquo means another thing, primordially.

Has anyone not noticed, that the postings since our farewell to the Hotel Albemarle have borne the theme of betrayal? As in Banquo's appearance at the feast, this was completely subconscious and unexpected. What does it mean, for a parting from a great attachment to turn upon one's own choice? We had scarcely begun to draw the bath of that poem; and as we closed the tap and sat there, the poem rising by itself, I wonder if it was shame of our displacement, and not the indifference of the invisible hand of readership demand that drew us from the bath. Maybe, guys will understand our example. I do not.

   HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

   If you don't like it, you can get on with it, I said.

   Others can pick and choose if you can't.

        

T.S. Eliot

The Waste Land

  II A Game of Chess

      ll 152 - 154

op. cit.

Morning coffee

Of all the assumptions which bring people together in the kitchen with-out prior notice, or even much acquaintance, morning coffee seems to place its preparation among the most laconic in our experience. We will be more loquacious on routes to the corner cab stand than we are in awaiting this expectation's fulfill-ment. I know a distinct resistance toward that precipitous boil to which the water is bound to come, in these circumstances - as, on a ruthless treadmill, I allow inertia to impose its percolation; and I know I prefer to will what little I may do at home. We could speak freely, but what good would it do? 

Leaving via the service entrance

       

        yes but I 

        wouldn't know

A swim before breakfast

or music?

Everything inscribes.